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Good PHP tutorial book?!?!?

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 5:31 am
by keogh
I'm new here and am currently a Cold Fusion and ASP developer (im only 21 yrs old :) ) and want to learn more... but especially I want to learn PHP!

I feel PHP is a very powerful language and is open source (and seeing I work with mySQL most of the time your can't beat the combination of mySQL and PHP) and would like to learn this.

I live in the UK and want to know what is a good tutorial book for PHP? I learnt Cold Fusion and ASP from a book and am now very efficeint with both... so feel a book works really well... I just gotta find the right book!

So what books would you advise? And where is the best place to get it? Also did you use a book to learn PHP?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 2:48 pm
by JPlush76
I have about 5 PHP books, although I find they all have basically the same info reading all of them gave me a very well rounded view of problems and solutions.

my work buys em so that helps too ;)

I would suggest any basic PHP for beginners book at your local bookstore or go to amazon.com and wade through em.

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 3:55 pm
by daven
I do not know if it is still available, but I like the Wrox Publishing series. The ugly red books with hideous pics of programmers on the front. *grin*

I utilized Wrox Professional PHP 4 in conjunction with the PHP manual and this forum to learn PHP.

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 4:03 pm
by Heavy
Start here and save some dollars, you'll get up running earlier aswell.
http://www.phpcomplete.com/
Click on tutorials on the left.

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 4:21 pm
by JPlush76
I would suggest a book FAR ahead of online tutorials. Most tutorials are written by hack coders and using a book gives you the complete picture from start to end.

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 4:44 pm
by phice
Plus you can read a book away from your desktop.

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 5:24 pm
by JPlush76
plus when you're done with a book you can put it on your shelf and impress the chicks with your knowledge of <span style='color:blue' title='I&#39;m naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span> they'll never grasp (twigletmac exluded ;))

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 11:51 pm
by phice
JPlush76 wrote:plus when you're done with a book you can put it on your shelf and impress the chicks with your knowledge of s**t they'll never grasp (twigletmac exluded ;))
Ah, good idea my friend. But, the only exception is that she actually knows the s**t in the books. ;)

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 3:10 am
by Heavy
Oops. Flames all over the place!:oops:
JPlush76 wrote:I would suggest a book FAR ahead of online tutorials. Most tutorials are written by hack coders and using a book gives you the complete picture from start to end.

Let me tell you. DON'T buy the JavaScript Bible by Danny Goodman distributed by IDG. It sucks.
Since that experience I have stuck to the Internet and found it very useful indeed.
I think a very good start to PHP programming is the PHP manual, wich also holds an introduction. Not very large though.
It also gives a nice bit about security

Let me state this.
Cut'nPaste doesn't work with books. :wink:

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 11:56 am
by phice
Heavy wrote:Let me state this.
Cut'nPaste doesn't work with books. :wink:
Ah, true, but not cutting and pasting is how I learned PHP (atleast got started on it). I figured out how everything was working in the script by typing each and every charector. And when I would miss a part of it by miss direction of eye sight, I would learn how to debug the current software quickly, instead of going word for word by the book.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:08 pm
by JPlush76
yea cutting and pasting slows your learning curve I think. Having to type it gets it logged in the memory banks.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:16 pm
by twigletmac
Typing stuff in does give you more time to think about what you are doing - I'm trying to teach myself some C from a book and copying the code and compiling it is teaching me much more than just grabbing the code from a site and adjusting a few variables.

Mac

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:35 pm
by Heavy
alright.
I didn't say that you have to Cut'nPaste just because it is possible.
I have always written all of my code by myself. I have never used a finished working script. So I'd say I learned to type my own mistakes.

I agree that books in general are good! But not all of them.

Maybe I should just escape from this thread as my first post took all the attention away from the questions in the first post... sooorey.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:36 pm
by JPlush76
lol, dammit heavy you thread hijacker!

I hear what you're saying.. there are definately plenty of crappy books out there. I say a mix of books and online tutorials will get you well rounded in a good amount of time.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 2:40 pm
by elToro
Let me state this.
Cut'nPaste doesn't work with books.
That's why so many books have companion Web sites and/or CD-ROMs.

That said, I agree with what others have said about the disadvantages of Cut 'n' Paste.