Posted by Schraalhans Keukenmeester on 04/15/07 05:40

WJRutledge wrote:
> Just like the subject says, I'm interested in taking up PHP and would
> like to know if anyone knows of any books that are a must have. I know
> there are tons of books out there on every language, but I'm sure some
> are much better than others. I'm mainly looking for a beginners book
> that also had advanced content too, but if that doesn't exist, then
> just an excellent beginners book would be fine too. Thanks in advance
> for any information you can give!
>
This is such a subjective matter I'd be tempted to say: browse a few in
a store (or try a sample online, or download an ebook (and be good and
pay for the one you choose to really work with) or just pick one of the
lot and start having fun. The time spent on shortlisting the 'good' ones
first may be time wasted.

If you care, I like the O'Reilly series (in general, and their PHP
collection in this case), but others have said they found it horrible.
My experience with a few Wiley books are the exact opposite, and you'll
find fans of those as well. Same goes for the XXX for Dummies series.

Online there is a LOT of free material as well, varying from very
complete collections of tuts and scripts ranging from simple to guru, to
utterly useless ego-ridden sets of PHP excrement.

I think for me my 'self-education' in C and C++ have helped me a lot at
first, since PHP's syntax has striking similarities.

Compared to many, PHP is a rather 'forgiving' language, which makes it
easy to get something working fast, at the same time it may lead to
sloppy coding practices that bite you in the belly later.

GL and welcome to PHP

Sh

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