Re: how to learn php

tedd wrote:

hello i have been trying to learn php. what is the best approach to learning php for someone who has no programming experience? -snip- any advice and/or opinions would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

First, welcome to the language. Second, I suggest that you find a beginner's book -- <snip>

1. If you can do any learning from books (e.g. you were/are a decent student in whatever educational system you did/are attend/attending), by all means follow tedd's "Second,".... Somewhat contrary to the advise "get a book with everything in it", I found Larry Ullman's "PHP & The World Wide Web" (PeachPit Press) to be "da bomb" when I decided to learn PHP. I'll plug him for readability, his explanations, and he was a fellow Missourian (think he's in California now). I get no money from PeachPit or Larry for that, though ... ;-) Keep in mind that there is no way that books can keep up with real-time development on a language like PHP; the need for the online manual (or the Windows .chm help files) is also great. In particular, I found that Larry's book was mostly written from a PHP3 POV, but PHP4 was out by the time I got my hands on it. There were a few differences; sometimes he made mention of that. 2. Write some code: <?php echo "Hello, world!"; ?> 3. Read the source code of scripts you can download for free at sites like hotscripts.com. Then, write something better (be sure to adhere to any licensing restrictions you find)! Then, you can start reading source code for bigger projects, and see how the "big boys" work.... 4. Get involved in a PHP developer community (PHPBuilder.com's forum gets my vote, and, of course, you've joined this mail-list, I suppose...) and read, read, read, and ask sensible questions. Read Eric S. Raymond's essay 'How to ask questions the smart way", if you've not already done so. So, it's "read, code, and read code; then, ask for help nicely if you need it!" Good luck with PHP, Kevin Kinsey -- Chicagoan: So, wherere you from?" Hoosier: "Whats wrong with Indiana?