UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Programming PHP and Server-side Scripting PHP Learning Curve for Utter Novice

I'm not a programmer at ALL. I'm decent at HTML, can come up decent applescript and quickeys macros and am a pretty serious whiz at GREP pattern matching, but that's it. Not even a touch of PERL/PHP/SQL in my background.

If I were to read a PHP manual like Beginning PHP4 by Chris Lea in a less-than-disciplined way, just trying to pick up an overview and nodding acquaintance with the language, would that give me any sort of registerable practical insight into fooling around with programs like WT3, or would it be like reading an anatomy primer and then attempting a heart transplant?

In other words, should I not even waste my time, or is the learning curve such that an utter novice can become a casual PHP tinkerer without major effort and study?

chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat

i can tell you that php is a pretty simple language. i never learned perl, i knew how to hack perl or mod scripts to fit my needs. but i never knew exactly what it did or just plain luck that i got em to do what i wanted them to do. if you pick up a php book and read from page one on you should pick it up real easy. i think that out of all the programming languages php is pretty easy.
i have 3 php books now, i only really use one now, almost once a week. i guess it depends on you, you can learn php over the internet, but i like to read. you can pretty much learn php just from looking at screams code. i have learned a lot of functions this way, i look at why and how he did certain things. if you could borrow a php book to see if it could help you, that is the best way to go.

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thanks poil! something tells me it may not be quite as easy for me as it is for you (sounds like you've got some innate talent for this stuff), but it's encouraging nonetheless.

Can you point me toward one of the online resources you mentioned? Preferably one that presumes no prior knowledge?

chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat

http://www.hotscripts.com
http://www.sitepoint.com
http://www.devshed.com
http://forums.devshed.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=5
http://www.sitepointforums.com
http://php.resourceindex.com/
http://www.google.com
there are a million beginner online tutorials. i think to be a programmer of any sort you have to have an understanding for problem solving and thats it pretty much.

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thanks for the list, Poil; I was kind of hoping for a "this is the great one" recco, but I'll happily go through what's out there and find one that suits my needs!

thanks again

chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat

hahaha, uhm those sites above are the great starting points. but i don't really recommend online tutorials. i couldn't figure it out on the computer, but when i had a book in my hand i was like ohhhhhhh. a good php book is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672319241.

devshed and sitepoint are a good place for begining php tutorials. but you can run thought hotscripts in the tutorials section and find some other good ones. i think the best tutorial is opening up w3t php and figuring what each function does and why scream did it.

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For those reading along, a really good online tutorial for abject beginners (which I found deep inside one of your links, Poil, thanks!) is at http://www.daholygoat.com.

the guys is working on a mysql tutorial, too....can't wait!

Thanks for the suggestion, but cracking open some major league PHP code like W3T and just sorta figuring it all out without a shred of programming experience may work for you, but not for the rest of us, alas.

chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat