Have you checked the Joomla Extensions site? There are thousands of extensions there. I recall using one back in 2009 to build a ticket site for an arts group. Can't recall what it was now, but the developer was based in England (if that helps). There are also 3rd party sites that let you generate the basic framework for a Joomla extension and you can just fill in the rest. I prefer C#/MVC for web development, but can change hats to do the PHP without suffering (much). Joomla is pretty well written and OO. If you squimnt MySQL is kinda like SQL Server, but slightly brain dead. I would look for a pre-built extension before doing development though.

I mostly maintain my own code, and I prefer the former as 1+ years later, I definitely won't remember the parameter order. Explicit is better for maintainability, even if it requires more typing. And way easier to explain the odd time when I have to bring another developer up to speed. Also, when I show the code to clients, it looks like I have done more work. :) A short little line of code does not look impressive.