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How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:42 am
by Audioicon
Hello everyone, I have been searching for a place I can get ideas and advise on PHP/MYSQL and my search kept bringing me to this forum.
My name is Patrick, I have been trying to learn PHP for a few weeks. So far all I know is what PHP/MYSQL can do and how they perform these task. Unfortunately I have not been able to learn anything else.
I'm extremely frustrated, all the books I have purchased so far, including books with great reviews are not helping.
These are the books I have read so far.
1. David Powers: Dreamweaver CS3, with CSS, AJAX and PHP.
This book is all over the place, it feels like the author wrote the book after leaving the bar on his way home in a taxi cab. The book does not stay with a topic and does not provide clear examples.
You open the book, start reading about PHP and the book instantly jump to using CSS to build forms.
2. Julie C. Meloni: Sams Teach yourself PHP, MYSQL and APACHE All in one.
This is the worst of all. Nothing in this book is for beginners.
3. I'm currently ready this one. PHP6 AND MYSQL 5 BY Larry Ullman.
It's not a bad book but it also spend tons of pages all over the place, not good toturials, just tons of explanation on what you can do with PHP.
Too many books are just very misleading, you read books that tells you what PHP can do from cover to cover but does not have a single page that shows you how to do it.
I'm looking for a book with exercises, a book that tells you what PHP can do, which I already know and then provide you with tutorials, examples and projects for you to try on your own.
I'm so sick of wasting money. I'm not going to give up but it will take me longer since I cannot find anything so far that gives you projects and tutorials with the explanations.
I'm open to any ideas, where do I go to next?
Are there any books that are truly for beginners that contain tutorials and explanations on how to implement/write these codes?
Thanks for your help - Patrick
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:20 am
by alex.barylski
I didn't read any of that only the subject but...
Of course you can teach yourself...I would gander a guess and say we all did to one degree or another...most of us here anyways.
PHP is trivial to get started with...complicated when you start solving interesting problems and acceptable for the majority of web tasks...actually I can't think of a good web example PHP is not a solid solution for.
Just get WAMP setup and start trying simple examples and gradually get more sophisticated. It's that easy!!!
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:27 am
by onion2k
By the sounds of things you're getting bogged down in thinking negatively about the books you've bought. You're expecting them to work like a teacher at school and go through things slowly step by step. Few books can do that because they try to cover a massive subject in quite a small number of pages. The only one I've found that's at all like that are the "Learn PHP in 24 hours" type of things - they're broken down into 24 lessons that are meant to be about an hour each. That sounds like the sort of thing that might suit you.
Before you dash out and buy that though - check out some online tutorials. Especially the official one -
http://uk2.php.net/tut.php - It's not brilliantly well written but it does lead you in slowly, and the user contributed comments are nice.
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:26 am
by idevlin
First thing I did was just to create my website in PHP. Nothing fancy, just to have headers and footers in PHP and include them, all very very simple. Then I added a contact page, so people could email me via a form, "how do I do that in PHP?" and found out via tutorials, and then decided to add a whiteboard so people could leave comments. Again taking the attitude of "how can I do this in PHP?" and using tutorials and php.net to find out about it.
Use the books and their examples as references for what you really want to do, and split what you want to do up into mini-projects.
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 9:29 am
by Audioicon
Well, that is the problem, the books I have bought are just all over the place. Eg. They write about arrays and variables and echo, blah blah blah, how are you suppose to build a page if you don't even know what those things are?
When I started reading Elizabeth Castro books on HTML and CSS, I was wow! Elizabeth Freeman is another one. I can now design sophisticated pages with HTML/XHTML and CSS with little trouble.
Most of these PHP authors are great programmers, that doesn't make them great teachers or writers. It's just frustrating when you buy a book that says for beginners and then it tell you nothing but technical rubbish.
I'll keep looking and doing more research.
Thanks for your help - Patrick
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 9:33 am
by Audioicon
Hockey wrote:I didn't read any of that only the subject but...
Of course you can teach yourself...I would gander a guess and say we all did to one degree or another...most of us here anyways.
PHP is trivial to get started with...complicated when you start solving interesting problems and acceptable for the majority of web tasks...actually I can't think of a good web example PHP is not a solid solution for.
Just get WAMP setup and start trying simple examples and gradually get more sophisticated. It's that easy!!!
I XAMPP installed and trying to write some codes, I know I can learn this stuff but the books are my worst drawback right now.
Appreciate your response
Patrick
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:03 am
by onion2k
Audioicon wrote:When I started reading Elizabeth Castro books on HTML and CSS, I was wow! Elizabeth Freeman is another one.
One of those two is Twigletmac on here. I don't remember which one though.
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:18 am
by matthijs
Funny you say the books hinder you. I find books extremely helpful. Of course there is a lot of information online (tutorials, blogs, forums, etc), but normally the information in a book is easier to read, better organized, better written, etc.
But, you can't just sit on the couch, read a book or two and expect to be able to write code. You have to read them to understand the basics. Then start coding little things yourself (or while you're reading, maybe even better). And then look back in the books or in other references if you encounter problems. The php manual, forums, etc
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:52 pm
by The_Anomaly
I'm certainly no expert here, but I've been in your shoes, and after a few months, I'm quite happy where I am with my PHP knowledge in that it's growing rapidly--and the more I code, the more I learn. Just joining this forum has taught me so much.
Anyway, my advice to you is to find a project, and figure out how to do it. PHP has such amazing resources on the Internet--and you already have two books. Find a project. Make a blog. Make a simple medical records program. Anything that's basic, but that's heavy in PHP. You have the problem (Say, how to perform a SELECT query from a mysql database and echo the results into a table or something), find the solution. If you stick to it, I guarantee you, you'll learn FAR more than any book can teach you. Just sit down, and start coding/googling.
My advice--it's gotten me to where I am right now, which is no where near the other's in this forum, but I'm on track to learn more and more with time.
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:22 am
by Audioicon
matthijs wrote:
But, you can't just sit on the couch, read a book or two and expect to be able to write code.
You are missing the point, I too find book interesting and helpful but just because someone can program an entire website for AMAZON that doesn't mean they should write a book. My problems with these books is they are misleading. You can't say something is a quick start guide or for beginners when nothing in the book tells you how to start PHP or anything else.
It's like teaching me XHTML and telling me nothing about DOCTYPE, you need to know what DOCTYPES are. I know nothing about PHP programing, and I wouldn't be buying a book if it wasn't for beginners.
Anyway, thanks for you effort.
Patrick
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:31 pm
by matthijs
Maybe you misinterpreted my comment a bit. Could be my fault, the way I wrote down my comment. I was not saying that you expected to learn just by reading a book or two. My point was that if you've got a good book and apply what you read directly and practice with the coding yourself, then the learning effect is much bigger. I have also made the mistake of first reading many books, without coding at all. In the end I only learned to understand reading code. So I could follow code reasonable well, but if you'd ask me to write a piece of script myself I didn't have a clue. I still have a long way to go by the way
But apparently you are not pleased with the books at all. I don't know the books you have read. The first 2 books you mention seem a bit broad scoped, judging from the titles. I did read a book from Larry Ullman, PHP for the world wide web second edition. That was my first book I think, and thought me the basics. That's certainly a very practical beginners book which starts with the echo "hello world" example and then goes through many more examples, from basic webforms, dealing with variables and arrays, writing your first mysql queries, a bit about sessions, etc. very useful.
Other books I found very good were from Sitepoint. For example, Build your own database driven website using php & mysql from Kevin Yanks. That's also a very practical book in which you build a very basic cms/blog system. And everything related with building that blog is also discussed and practiced.
Then a step further are the PHP Anthology books, which is more a book with how-to recipes for different problems in php and mysql.
Last, I think different people have different ways of learning. One learns best by reading books, another by discussions with others, another fron practicing, etc. So maybe you discovered that books in general are not the best way for you to learn? Or, again, you had bad luck with a few bad books..
Re: How can I learn PHP/MYSQL? Is there a teach yourself way?
Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 12:03 am
by swiftouch
Bro,
I feel your frustration. 95% of books only give a portion of what you want out of the language. First and foremost. I would start learning by giving yourself a project. What are you trying to do with php/mysql? Keep it simple at first.
All in one books suck...however, i did manage to find a book that actually helped in SOOOOO many ways.
PHP5 and MySQL Bible (published by Willey)
I'll tell you the biggest problem for me in learning PHP/MySQL was understanding a concept the 1st time(there are 1000's to understand). There are some concepts I've never grasped even on the 50th try(like OOP programming)...but then again I have the brains of a monkey. In short I've spent a lot of time going over tutorials. Sometimes I understand it on the 1st tutorial, sometimes I scour the 'net for a 5th or 6th before I have the epiphany(ah-ha) experience.
You just have to keep at it and find the tutorial where you get that ah-ha experience. It's oh so worth it once it happens.
Cheers