Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
I received an Amazon gift card recently, and I thought I'd burn it out on some good PHP books. So I'd like to know y'all recommend? I already have POEAA. Here are a couple that have been recommended to me before.
Design Patterns (GOF)
Refactoring (Fowler)
I was also thinking about Essential PHP Security (Chris Shiflett).
PHP noob looking for some advice...I have recently made my not so triumphant return into the programming/web design world after a 4 year hiatus. The limited amount of PHP that I had learned has now vanished and I'm looking to regain that knowledge. I'm looking for a great textbook that's going to give me a solid base knowledge, preferably holding my hand the entire duration of the process. I'm looking for something that's going to take me from installation of MAMP, WAMP, etc. to a final product that I can base future projects on. I just WANT to learn the language in general.
I have taken a look at the textbooks mentioned above, but it doesn't seem like they're exactly what i'm looking for. Would a book like PHP For Dummies be able to teach me the basics? Or do I need to get a little more in depth? How about tutorials? Should I ignore the textbooks and look towards videos? If tutorials are the way to go, does anybody have suggestions for me?
Please overlook the fact that these questions are quite novice and potentially time consuming to respond to. I would really appreciate the insight. I'm sure there are still some programmers out there with the desire and time to pass on some of their knowledge to a "noob". I hope I find that person here (awwwww), lol.
webby8842 wrote:Would a book like PHP For Dummies be able to teach me the basics?
I'm not a fan of those sort of books personally - I suppose it depends on how you learn though. Something I used when I was getting started with PHP was the PHP Cookbook from O'Reilly. Not perfect perhaps, but easier to read and less condescending than many of the books for beginners, particularly if like you you have some background in programming anyway. You can take it as a whole entity or dip in and out as you please. I like that approach.
i started out with a for dummies book and with a ton of help from the guys here I have actually learned quite a bit...its a great book and this is a great forum
Christopher wrote:In addition to Refactoring, Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.
He already has it but yeah those two. There is a few in my signature that I consider "medium level", clean code for example someone recommended above, I second that... Go with "clean code" you'll get the most bang for your buck IMO
What are your thoughts on this review ("A Disappointment" - Robert Stine)? Would you say that some fair points are made there? I haven't read it myself but I was thinking of getting it after seeing it mentioned on the forums so many times (though I won't be buying the Kindle edition, judging by one of the other reviews!)
From what I can tell the guy who wrote this review is not "sold" on unit testing, and would rather just comment his code. That's fine because some programmers are smart people and can mentally "juggle" all the concerns needed to understand code. This book is written for those of us who although we can mentally juggle, want our code to be well understood by other programmers... (or by ourselves years down the road).
The book will give a better appreciation & knack for verbosely naming things in your code. It helps you articulate the ways your current code sucks (whoever you are... this is not aimed at any one person - however after reading this book you may just think everyone sucks at programming, he describes a utopian way to program that may or may not be 100% possible but will definitely improve your standards)
It didn't just give me technical knowledge but also an attitude change, instead of seeing your program as half clean, you'll start to see it as half messy. That's a good thing.