Advice on Becoming Senior PHP Dev

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supermike
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Advice on Becoming Senior PHP Dev

Post by supermike »

I want to get started on the road to becoming a Senior PHP Dev. I've already written a thin CMS and an elaborate work order tracking system, and do use objects a little bit, and have learned to completely encapsulate my HTML so that my pages look like pure PHP. I've also moved from learning MySQL and now have mastered quite a bit of PostgreSQL, which I like even better. I've transitioned from PHP4 to PHP5. However, I want to be prepared for other job offers down the road.

* What frameworks for PHP should I be learning to help do faster application building? I mean, what's most popular right now?

* What are your top things that you change in the PHP.INI?

* A new website was introduced at my office for work management. They roll out features in portal gadgets controlled by roles and they built their own custom portal. What equivalent framework is available in PHP that I can use without having to recreate this from scratch?

* What objects of PEAR or PECL (did I spell that acronym right) do you use most?
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

CakePHP is probably one of the framework Kings of the current year. The Zend Framework is also up and coming - as an incentive it's relatively simple to dig around the ZF code and see how OOP operates. The 0.2 release has some fairly large changes to be released so grabbing an SVN export is not a bad idea.

In the php.ini - anything security related. Other tweaks depend on the circumstances. PECL extensions can have settings you need append to the php.ini file to load and configure them for use.

The PECL extension I use the most (excluding the default packages most PHP installations are configured with) is XDebug.
timvw
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Re: Advice on Becoming Senior PHP Dev

Post by timvw »

supermike wrote: * What are your top things that you change in the PHP.INI?
session.save_path
output.seperator
supermike wrote: * A new website was introduced at my office for work management. They roll out features in portal gadgets controlled by roles and they built their own custom portal. What equivalent framework is available in PHP that I can use without having to recreate this from scratch?
The one your office is using seems most appropriate?

supermike wrote: * What objects of PEAR or PECL (did I spell that acronym right) do you use most?
PEAR: None

PECL: mysql(i), mbstring.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

You may want to not focus on frameworks and the like and instead focus on core development of apps from the ground up. I was in your spot a few weeks ago when I was looking for a new job. When I landed in my new position, I found out quickly that they were not interested in a pre-built app but wanted a completely uniquely built framework. That requires knowledge of core system building, PHP5 OOP, database interaction utilizing the database(s) in your company and a host of other things.

Some of the ini settings I change from the core set up are short_tags, sybase/mssql min_error_levels, display_errors (On for dev, Off for prod), etc.
supermike
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Post by supermike »

Everah wrote:You may want to not focus on frameworks and the like and instead focus on core development of apps from the ground up. I was in your spot a few weeks ago when I was looking for a new job. When I landed in my new position, I found out quickly that they were not interested in a pre-built app but wanted a completely uniquely built framework. That requires knowledge of core system building, PHP5 OOP, database interaction utilizing the database(s) in your company and a host of other things.

Some of the ini settings I change from the core set up are short_tags, sybase/mssql min_error_levels, display_errors (On for dev, Off for prod), etc.
Thanks for the great advice.
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