Posted by Erwin Moller on 03/30/07 08:57

K.J.Williams wrote:

> Hello,
>
> A friend and I want to learn PHP but we have two totally different
> programming backgrounds.
> I have experience with procedural programming in C, and he has
> experience with Visual BASIC.
> Well we wanted to know, what type of learning curve ( of difficulty )
> we would have trying to learn PHP?
> Also, What will be the most significant changes for us to adapt to? I
> wanted to know if PHP is like
> bash shell scripting for Linux?
>
> Thanks
> KJW

Hi,

You have both a good background to start learning PHP fast.
In PHP you can work procedural. If you are confortable with the language,
you can start OOP too (no need, just another way of programming, cleaner in
some aspects).

PHP is easy to pick up.

Things to focus on from the start (in my humble opinion)
- Understand HTML forms
- Understand how PHP receives information (superglobal $_GET[] and $_POST[])
from the forms.
- keep paying attention to php.ini. It may seem like a dull piece of
settings in the beginning, but you'll understand more of it as you learn
more PHP. Just keep coming back there. :-)
- use www.php.net always to lookup functions.
Pay attention to the often usefull comments by other users.
- Get a good book (O'Reilly has a few good ones)
- If you recycle other people's code, never copy/paste, but just
rebuild/retype it yourself, using the examplecode only as a reference.
(This increases understanding in my opinion)
- If you plan on using a database, beware SQL injection. This involves
understanding of the database, php.ini (magic_quotes and such), and make it
a habbit of echo'ing all your SQL untill you are comfortable you know what
happens.
- Get a nice editor with syntax highlighting.
- important: make sure you let PHP see all the errors/notices/warning/etc.
(Again in php.ini: error_reporting)
- When confused, come to comp.lang.php, but you found that place already.
;-)
We have an active helpfull community here. This group is one of the
friendliest and helpful usenetgroups I have seen. You never have to wait
long for a response.

And of course: Enjoy!

Regards,
Erwin Moller

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