Although I’ve primarily used PHP with MySQL/MariaDB, and now I’m learning to code in SwiftUI, I’ve also dabbled in other languages.
One example is Perl. I don’t use Perl a lot right now, but it’s in keeping with my “teach myself what I need to know, when I need it”, that I’ve had cause to get under the hood of YaBB (‘Yet Another Bulletin Board’), a Perl forum platform.
I had originally created an online community forum in the aftermath of the rapid demise of the official Classic TV channel discussion board, using a language I was a little more familiar with – phpBB. At the time, that proved to be a security worry and, due to the number of users not being as large as I’d anticipated, I switched to YaBB.
As well as introducing me to the Perl language, YaBB also introduced me to a flatfile data system where I’d previously relied heavily on MySQL. In hindsight, this flatfile system would be a spark that reignited when I began using JSON in my current learning modules. They’re obviously not the same thing, but the concepts of taking data from a text file rather than using database commands does create some similar thought processes.