hundreds of ways to do one thing

i been reading around lately, the new books i got and online here and there for advice on how to do certain things.

it makes we think everyone has there own style and method of doing stuff when programing. now some of it is bad some of it is quite clever (and some of it depends on your point of view). but they can all accomplish the same objective (just in a different way). always doing things differently means there are differences in the way it acts or preforms (go visit 3 or 4 different websites that have web forums and you will notice a difference between how they all deal with data just from the UI). 

so seeking adive for a lot of different sources can be a bit problematic, as you end up making something work in a number of different ways (like using JSTL tags for some data query and then ignoring JSTL and just use java script in a different place), i think what makes the difference between a good programmer and someone who can just code is that a good programmer can look at code or example code and understand what is happening (thus being able to see what is happening in all the different approaches) then match them all up so they work in a perfect union. someone who can just code will place all the different methods of performing a task that he knows, program works but its not as good as it could be.

i used be to that someone who just codes (and sometimes i still am when i have no clue at what I'm looking at) but over the years i have learnt that you got to really understand your work to make it perfect, even if that means a bit of a headache trying to figer out why this does that...

on the same note though different is good. lately i seen two different methods of accessing the XML data from the eve API, both work and work well. just they did in in different ways. as examples give me a few good ideas to make my own framework for this task as there is no point in using someone Else's work if i want to really learn how to do this, after i done this i can use it again or seek someone Else's work but for now i want to know how i can do it and how it works, which in turn sets me apart from the person who just codes

till next time
Antony