I’m currently teaching myself PHP5 using the Wrox book, and it’s coming along OK. I don’t think it deserves the reviews it’s getting, but then again, I haven’t started on the MySQL part yet. The problem is that even though the book is for beginners, the learning curve is a bit steep. I’m learning a little, but most of the advanced stuff is going over my head, and I’m looking for a supplemental textbook that’s a bit easier on the newbie. I’m looking at this book and this one, but I want the Dope’s opinion before putting my money down.
I know there are online tutorials, and some of them look pretty good, but again, they get into the advanced stuff a little too quickly, and even the good ones are badly organized about these books or any others?
I should probably point out that my main purpose in learning PHP is to learn how to program and interact with online databases. I want to use it for other functions, too, but this is the main thing for me.
I’ve never had to teach myself PHP but there’s nothing wrong with the For Dummies series. That’s how I began learning about ASP (which is analogous to PHP) and did eventually become an “ASP Guru”. I recently bought the ASP.NET 2.0 For Dummies book and it’s been good so far.
I took a 2-weekend workshop at my college for credit on PHP in 1999 or 2000, and we used the Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours book, I believe.
Hard for me to say how well it did for me because I never pursued PHP beyond that class, and I already had a very good working knowledge of Web scripts to database relation by then. But it’s a book they use for a beginner’s class at a college, FWIW.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to read and then DO - do the tutorials and then fiddle with the code and try to make it into something more than just following the directions.
Generally, if you are looking for books about open-source programming languages and technologies, O’Reilly should be your first stop. Their books are usually well-written and information-dense, and the authors often include major contributors to the product being described. For example, Programming PHP was co-written by Rasmus Lerdorf, creator and lead developer of PHP.
You may want to start here and have a look at the list of books in the bottom-left corner.
I’ll agree that a lot of them are good, but I can’t pass up this chance to badmouth a ‘Java Programming for Dummies’ I got many years ago. (There may be a newer edition which fixes this.)
The whole point is that there shouldn’t be any obvious questions left unanswered, nowhere that a beginner (or a dummy) should feel like wondering ‘Okay, this is a stupid question, but I don’t understand…’
Book explained the write code-compile-test cycle in a lot of detail. Went through a lot of sample code and variations that you could do with it. Included the newest copy of the sun Java Development Kit on CD.
Nowhere in the book did it explain the compiling step in any more detail than ‘compile your code.’ Not a word of explanation about exactly how one was supposed to accomplish this feat. Even the JDK docs, for a beginner, were far from clear about where you should find javac, how to run it, what arguments you should use, and so on.
It was years after I got the book, after I’d been exposed to Microsoft J++ in school (:D) that I actually worked such things out. Definitely don’t think that’s good for a ‘for dummies’ book.
(end of sidetrack, go back to talking about PHP now.)
Even the JDK docs, for a beginner, were far from clear about where you should find javac, how to run it, what arguments you should use, and so on.