<comp.lang.php>
<WJRutledge>
<13 Apr 2007 23:23:28 -0700>
<11**********************@w1g2000hsg.googlegroups. com>
Just like the subject says, I'm interested in taking up PHP and would
like to know if anyone knows of any books that are a must have. I know
there are tons of books out there on every language, but I'm sure some
are much better than others. I'm mainly looking for a beginners book
that also had advanced content too, but if that doesn't exist, then
just an excellent beginners book would be fine too. Thanks in advance
for any information you can give!
Every php book that i've seen has been written by people who have long
forgotten what it was like to be a php newbie .
As such - they dont tell the php newbie what they need to know in order
to get started with php .
More often than not the first few chapters of most php books tend to
concentrate on telling you things that you will never really use like
how to convert a string to a number etc .
One php book i bought even thanked the lord jesus christ for allowing
him to write his php book and needless to that particular page got
ripped out and chucked in the bin .
The point of that is - most authors who write php beginner books are
more interested in their own petty reasons why they wrote the book and
trying to convince you to use their style of scripting .
Putting all the above aside , The actual php.net website is as much use
as a chocolate teapot in the sahara desert when you first start out
learning php as its a geek reference manual rather than a tutorial .
But its not all bad as once you do get up and running with php and once
you learn the syntax that php uses - most commands can be learnt quite
quickly with the minimum of fuss .
In short and to sum up - php is a real cunt to learn because it takes a
couple of months tinkering around to learn all the basics and to be able
to start writing things at will .
But dont let me put you off old chap :-))
