NYCPHP Meetup

[Brian O'Connor]

The best way I learned was just to do something that was relevant.  Even
today when learning new things, if I am just learning the theory and not
actually putting it into place I don't grasp it as well.  Make yourself a
homepage, and put the things you want on there.  Like sports?  Figure out
how to make a sports blog with predictions or whatever.  When I was
learning, I created my homepage with a blog, calendar, and a gallery because
that's what I wanted to create, and I learned the most from that.  Things
start to click when you're more engaged.

On Jan 16, 2008 8:54 PM, B.A.S. <lists at nopersonal.info> wrote:

> Jake, those are exactly the sort of tips I was looking for--thanks so
> much for the advice and for wishing me luck.
>
> Bev
>
> Jake McGraw wrote:
> > Couple of suggestions:
> >
> > 1. Really read the documentation available at php.net, it is the best
> > resource available online. At the very least, go through the the
> > Language Reference section (although you can ignore the sections
> > pertaining to PHP4). Additionally, anytime you're doing something with
> > a string or array, see if there is a function available for what
> > you're doing. I'd say 90% of the time someone has already done the
> > hard work and all you need to do is read the documentation. As a short
> > cut, typing  "http://www.php.net/foobar" into the address bar will
> > automatically search the PHP function list for any functions like
> > "foobar".
> >
> > 2. Learn a templateing system, my personal favorite is Smarty
> > [smarty.php.net] and get all of your HTML out of your PHP code. This
> > ties into a larger lesson for all programmers, that is learning
> > Model-View-Controller pattern
> > [wikpedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller].
> >
> > 3. See how the pros do it, download Drupal [drupal.org/download] or
> > Vanilla [getvanilla.com] or some other Open Source PHP project and
> > look at some of the conventions these developers employ. You need not
> > review every line, but get an idea for how these people organize their
> > code. Install the framework and see how things work.
> >
> > That is how I've done things and I feel like I'm getting there. FYI, I
> > started using PHP professionally about 2 years ago, but most of what I
> > learned, I've accumulated in the last 6 months working as the sole
> > developer for a major PHP application. You won't necessary move on
> > from a noob to pro by just reading the documentation and doing the
> > exercises, find something to work on (maybe write your own database
> > driven blog) and throw yourself into it.
> >
> > Good luck!
> > - jake
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-- 
Brian O'Connor
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