Moving on

iantimmy123

I've been coding PHP for a while now and would say I'm progressing to an intermediate stage. Up to this point I've been making sites and learning as I go along mainly through the use of tutorials and a few books I have.

However, I seem to have hit a wall, I would like to improve my skills further and am not sure how to do so. Are there any books or sites which can help me progress to a more advanced level. Everything seems to be for beginners or advanced users with nothing in between.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks

NogDog

I don't have any specific recommendations on resources, since I don't really know what it is you need to learn at this point. A couple general guidlines would be to (1) work on improving you knowledge of database design and query optimization and (2) learing more about object-oriented programming theory and techniques; the former because nearly all non-trivial applications you'll be working on will include database transactions, and the latter because OOP is an excellent way to organize both your thinking and your code implementation when designing larger applications. In both cases, don't just focus on specifics of PHP functions and commands in these areas, but in the general theory so that you understand "why", not just the "how".

The zend.com site has quite a few tutorials and aritcles, most of which are pretty good, which you might want to browse.

iantimmy123

Thanks for that. I'll start revising OOP now lol

Weedpacket

Don't just restrict yourself to looking for PHP-specific material. Programming is programming, and different languages offer different perspectives (all of which help - even if it's an object lesson in what to avoid (e.g., BASIC)). Like geometry, there is no royal road to programming.

And above all: what I was told was to read code and write code. If you find yourself dreaming in a programming language it's actually a good sign that some of it's sinking in.

dougal85

The biggest step I made lately was trying to use OOP with PHP. I am starting to see the huge the benifits. It's really awesome. Once you have completed a fair part of a project it just feels so cool and easy to understand. and i lost just adding objects in and out as i need them. so easy! 🙂 I know NogDog made this point, but i thought I would add to it.

I also agree to his point about databases. I used to this databases were simple things and Microsoft Access was all there was too it! That was ofcourse about 5 years ago. I've now studied databases in some of my modules at university and realised there is so much importance in setting up the databases properly. Now i consider a well designed database to be very important.

However, Its hard to know what to learn, unless you have a reson to learn it. I challange myself to new projects that do something that i don't already know. Or i try and speed up pages I've already made... Yup, I'm sad enough to print the execution time of my scripts and then try and reduce it. The same goes with my SQL queries.

/ EDIT
I forgot to add, I think i am probably in the same stage with my PHP as
you are iantimmy123. So if you find anything that helps you allot that
we have not mentioned. Let me know 😉 I want to learn too! 🙂
*/

iantimmy123

Weedpacket wrote:
If you find yourself dreaming in a programming language it's actually a good sign that some of it's sinking in.

I am starting to dream about 'if' statements, it's a start 😉