[56k warn] Coming clean and begging for help
Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 9:57 pm
Confession time:
I'm not a good programmer. My entire life has been small "blips" of code education in such a vast array of laguages, but I couldn't recite any code to you if I wanted to. I got a B+ in my Pascal class, go figure. Point is, I know my basic logic enough to translate new syntax into simple programs. PHP has a very simple syntax, which I think was it's biggest draw for me some 5 years ago when I first got into it.
Since those 5 years I've rarely...no, never coded. Now, I'm hitting the books hard because I have an enormous idea that I have a lot of faith in, but don't have the money to just "hire" people to do the work for me (and besides, that's no fun, I'd at least like to be part of the development "team"). So I've been reading up on all the latest trends and technologies etc. and it finally dawned upon me, I don't know PHP well enough to do this.
Yeah, I need to know all these other things like XML, SQL, JavaScript, Ajax, DHTML, XSLT, RELAX NG, the list goes on, but my base is PHP, and I need to know it like the back of my hand to pull the rest of them together. Duh!
So I panicked and ran to my local bookstore and started scanning every PHP book on the shelves searching for something to suit my needs.
I'm familiar enough with really basic syntax to be able to read scripts and make (to some extent) heads or tails of it.
For some reason I read Peter Lavin's OOP PHP book. I understood it...for the most part, I feel like I didn't get everything I was expecting out of it.
I'm not sure what I should be looking for. It's hard to describe some of the logic I'm looking to implement and no book so far has covered any of it to the extent that satisfies me, so I'm kind of lost.
Basically I just want some good recommendations on books to get me up to speed with PHP so I can begin learning all the advanced techniques which I've found in other books.
I think in general I'm just really scared of starting any sort of code for some reason so I'm trying to find a good resource that will help ease me into the process really well.
Any ideas?
Thanks
I'm not a good programmer. My entire life has been small "blips" of code education in such a vast array of laguages, but I couldn't recite any code to you if I wanted to. I got a B+ in my Pascal class, go figure. Point is, I know my basic logic enough to translate new syntax into simple programs. PHP has a very simple syntax, which I think was it's biggest draw for me some 5 years ago when I first got into it.
Since those 5 years I've rarely...no, never coded. Now, I'm hitting the books hard because I have an enormous idea that I have a lot of faith in, but don't have the money to just "hire" people to do the work for me (and besides, that's no fun, I'd at least like to be part of the development "team"). So I've been reading up on all the latest trends and technologies etc. and it finally dawned upon me, I don't know PHP well enough to do this.
Yeah, I need to know all these other things like XML, SQL, JavaScript, Ajax, DHTML, XSLT, RELAX NG, the list goes on, but my base is PHP, and I need to know it like the back of my hand to pull the rest of them together. Duh!
So I panicked and ran to my local bookstore and started scanning every PHP book on the shelves searching for something to suit my needs.
I'm familiar enough with really basic syntax to be able to read scripts and make (to some extent) heads or tails of it.
For some reason I read Peter Lavin's OOP PHP book. I understood it...for the most part, I feel like I didn't get everything I was expecting out of it.
I'm not sure what I should be looking for. It's hard to describe some of the logic I'm looking to implement and no book so far has covered any of it to the extent that satisfies me, so I'm kind of lost.
Basically I just want some good recommendations on books to get me up to speed with PHP so I can begin learning all the advanced techniques which I've found in other books.
I think in general I'm just really scared of starting any sort of code for some reason so I'm trying to find a good resource that will help ease me into the process really well.
Any ideas?
Thanks































