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Recommended Books?

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 11:04 pm
by Jonah Bron
Hello, world!

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).

My card budget is $50. How about it?

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 8:00 am
by Darhazer
Refactoring is very good book.
I would recommend you "Clean Code" By Robert Martin.

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 2:26 pm
by webby8842
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

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 3:22 pm
by Jonah Bron
@webby8842: I don't really know any specific sites or books. I've learned over the past few years by doing. That's the best way IMHO.

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:56 am
by webby8842
Thanks for the response Jonah...doesn't look like i'm going to get too many more. LOL, awesome.

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 11:44 am
by alex.barylski
The GoF book is one of my all time favorites :)

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 2:28 pm
by webby8842
Thank you :)

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 9:00 pm
by greyhoundcode
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.

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 10:06 pm
by webby8842
Thank you greyhoundcode...I will look into it. :)

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:14 am
by Obadiah
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

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 1:05 pm
by greyhoundcode
+1

This forum is definitely one of the best resources for PHP.

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 8:39 pm
by Christopher
In addition to Refactoring, Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 10:56 am
by josh
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

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 11:25 am
by greyhoundcode
@josh / anyone else who has read Clean Code:

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!)

Re: Recommended Books?

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:13 pm
by josh
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) :-D

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.