Learning PHP

[matt6805]

I'm new to PHP and have no other programming experience. I can handle Arrays, Loops, Conditionals....Pretty basic stuff, mostly from tutorials and posting to message boards like this one.

I've been looking at a few frameworks like Cake, Symfony, Zend....
But the question is, are these frameworks a good environment tolearn PHP in? 😕 None of the message boards for these frameworks seem to address this.

I get the feeling that these are tools a developer would decide to use after they have a solid understanding of PHP. Can anyone give me their take on it?

Thanks!

Matt

[laserlight]

One good way to learn is to read and modify well written code. However, you may have a hard time reading and understanding such code if you do not know about functions and classes.

Beyond syntax, you may have questions like: why did the framework designer choose to do things this way? You might have to plow through developer documentation to find out. In this sense, working through a book that teaches concepts like object oriented programming, design patterns, and other design principles can be better than trying to use an existing framework to learn from.

[WeAnswer_IT]

Frameworks tend to be pretty advanced code. I would not suggest trying to learn PHP from a framework.

The best way to learn PHP is to read scripts where you can see ALL the input and ALL the output. Frameworks tend to use a lot of includes, which means you can't see all the input (as easily), and they do not have a fixed output that you can look at.

I learned PHP the way you are, with no prior programming experience. When I reached the advanced level, however, I discovered that there were gaps in my knowledge: basic PHP principles and syntax that I had never seen or heard of.

That's why, like laserlight said, a book is a good idea, but you can also find a wealth of tutorials in the internet. Try PHP for the Absolute Beginner so that you have a good grounding, and you don't have gaps in your knowledge like I did.

[tygg]

I learn from reading scripts, but I learn mistakes some times because there are badly programmed php, so take care.