Though Paul is, without a doubt, a greater authority than me on the
subject, you might want to start by using an existing framework that
forces controller-model-view programming.
By using one of the frameworks, it takes some of the "architecture"
decisions out of your hands, forcing you to practice "good" php
programming design, letting you focus on learning the in and outs of the
language while doing something useful.
Then, when you program your own programs from scratch, you will be
practicing "good architecture" by default.
I recommend CodeIgniter (http://codeigniter.com/), since it has a nice
BSD style license, and excellent online help.
- Scott Grizzard
Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 03, 2009 at 08:33:56AM -0400, William Coulter wrote:
>
>> I want to start making some PHP programs but don't know where to start.
>> What books or web sites should I buy or goto? What do I need to have
>> installed to make them work?
>>
>
> On this, I feel I can (finally) reply with authority. The php.net
> website has some of the best documentation in existence. Period. The
> best book for the language is O'Reilly's "Programming PHP". I keep this
> on my desk and refer to it constantly. In the back is a full reference
> for functions of the language, only matched by the php.net site. You can
> also try O'Reilly's "Learning PHP5".
>
> If you've programmed in C before, you know 90% of PHP. The library
> functions of PHP are mostly named and modeled directly after those of
> the standard C library. The main differences are that variables are
> prefixed with a dollar sign ($), and you have to remember you're
> programming inside a browser (usually), and the code is executed on the
> server. Plus, being a scripting/interpreted language, PHP doesn't
> require pre-declaration of variables the way C does.
>
> If you have no experience with programming, PHP will be harder to learn,
> and the above books will help, but may not be enough. I can't help you,
> going from non-programmer to PHP programmer. It's been too long since I
> was a non-programmer.
>
> Paul
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 20:30:13 EDT