Classes: Custom vs Framework?

leafer

Hey everyone., first time poster long time reader 😃

I'm a few weeks away from finishing the OO portion of my learning and needed a bit of advice on which direction I should take to yield the best learning results.

Should I get in the habit of writing all of my class files from scratch or begin using frameworks at first then once I'm comfortable with OO begin customizing my own?

I have absolutely no deadlines (school, work, etc) to meet or anything of the sort so my top priority is learning the material (however long that takes).

Thanks.

NogDog

leafer;10909940 wrote:
Hey everyone., first time poster long time reader 😃

I'm a few weeks away from finishing the OO portion of my learning and needed a bit of advice on which direction I should take to yield the best learning results.

Congratulations. I've been learning OO for a few years now and am still working on it. :p

Should I get in the habit of writing all of my class files from scratch or begin using frameworks at first then once I'm comfortable with OO begin customizing my own?...

I see no reason to limit yourself to one or the other. You can learn a lot from studying other people's code (realizing there's a lot of spaghetti code out there that should be ignored), and you can learn a lot from writing stuff from the ground up. Even if you use some sort of framework, chances are you'll be writing some classes of your own, too.

The main thing is to not just concentrate on learning the syntax/mechanics of PHP classes and objects, but the whole concept of why you would use object-oriented design and programming.

nrg_alpha

NogDog;10909942 wrote:
I've been learning OO for a few years now and am still working on it. :p

Really? Damn! You're pretty strong on classes. I figured you had it all wrapped up and in the bag. If you're still 'working on it', I can only imagine how long it will take someone like me lol

leafer

NogDog;10909942 wrote:
The main thing is to not just concentrate on learning the syntax/mechanics of PHP classes and objects, but the whole concept of why you would use object-oriented design and programming.

At the moment I'm just concentrating on the syntax and have written a few working test classes (something useful). Once I'm comfortable with the ins and outs of OO vs procedural I'll move on to my books/tutorials on design patterns. A friend recommended the Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software book (GoF) and a few others by apress.

At the moment I could code procedural (if given enough time 😃) but I wanted to know both styles so I'm better informed when tackling projects in the future.

nrg_alpha

nrg_alpha;10909944 wrote:
Really? Damn! You're pretty strong on classes. I figured you had it all wrapped up and in the bag. If you're still 'working on it', I can only imagine how long it will take someone like me lol

I just re-read my response..

I hope I didn't come off the wrong way by saying 'I figured you had it all wrapped up and in the bag.' as it doesn't sound too positive now that I read it again. You've got an extremely strong grip / understanding on classes.. god knows, you've bailed me out in the code critique forum from my class issues.

My apologies if it came out wrong.

NogDog

The Apress book that helped me a lot with PHP OOP is Zandstra's PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice.

@nrg: It's not like that's all I've done over that time. I've been exposed to bits and pieces of OOD/OOP for many years, but it's really only in the last year or two that I've started trying to "get it" and actually write some object-oriented code -- not just code that happens to use classes/objects.

Weedpacket

leafer wrote:
Once I'm comfortable with the ins and outs of OO vs procedural

I think that's the bit that NogDog meant by "the whole concept of why you would use object-oriented design and programming". Learning the syntax that PHP happens to use for OO is the easiest part. (Indeed, learning the syntax of a programming language is the easiest part of learning the language.)

Of course, once you've got procedural and OO programming sussed, you can start learning other programming paradigms like functional programming 🙂

nrg_alpha

NogDog;10909952 wrote:
@nrg: It's not like that's all I've done over that time. I've been exposed to bits and pieces of OOD/OOP for many years, but it's really only in the last year or two that I've started trying to "get it" and actually write some object-oriented code -- not just code that happens to use classes/objects.

I understand completely. And you got an excellent grasp of it from what I see (you've shown me a thing or two about classes.. and I have still have a long way to go).

Sorry again about my comment.. I can see how it was perceived. It wasn't intended that way, I assure you. I must be much more careful how I phrase things, as there is room to get it wrong if not done correctly.

leafer

NogDog;10909952 wrote:
The Apress book that helped me a lot with PHP OOP is Zandstra's PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice.

@nrg: It's not like that's all I've done over that time. I've been exposed to bits and pieces of OOD/OOP for many years, but it's really only in the last year or two that I've started trying to "get it" and actually write some object-oriented code -- not just code that happens to use classes/objects.

That's the one I'm using at the moment. 😃 I'm glad they've written it to teach rather than as one long man page (like many others). The first book I used to get the whole ball rolling was Head First PHP&Mysql. That entire series of books is phenomenal at getting you started (because of all the diagrams) but they didn't cover the OO portion of PHP unfortunately.

NogDog

Hey, I wasn't taking anything in any negative manner, so no worries. While I have a pretty strong hands-on experience with PHP, I still have a lack of formal training and recognize that I am by no means God's gift to computer programming theory and practice. But I do have the "gift of gab" (a.k.a. good B.S. skills) and am pretty good at making it at least sound like I know what I'm talking/writing about.

nrg_alpha

Oh, I don't think you need formal training to be honest. You're extremely knowledgable and well rounded thru your hands on experience (which in itself could be as good, if not better, than formal training, depending on how deep you get into things and much you exercise them).

John Carmack, the famous coder at ID Software (who was the pioneer in writting 1st person 3d game engines like Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake [alongside mentor Michael Abrash] was pretty much self taught - along with working with other very knowledgable peers).

So you seem to be doing just fine without formal training IMO 😉

laserlight

NogDog wrote:
I've been learning OO for a few years now and am still working on it.

Yeah, as I like to say, you can't teach an old NogDog new tricks :p

leafer wrote:
A friend recommended the Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software book (GoF) and a few others by apress.

I would recommend it as a classic reference for design patterns, but not as a tutorial. The book that I would recommend as a tutorial and less technical appearing reference is Head First Design Patterns by Eric and Elisabeth Freeman. It uses Java as the "medium of instruction", but PHP 5's object syntax is similiar enough to Java that you should be able to grasp what they are doing in the examples.

leafer

laserlight;10909961 wrote:
I would recommend it as a classic reference for design patterns, but not as a tutorial. The book that I would recommend as a tutorial and less technical appearing reference is Head First Design Patterns by Eric and Elisabeth Freeman. It uses Java as the "medium of instruction", but PHP 5's object syntax is similiar enough to Java that you should be able to grasp what they are doing in the examples.

I'll definitely look into that book LL. Thx

nrg_alpha

laserlight;10909961 wrote:
The book that I would recommend as a tutorial and less technical appearing reference is Head First Design Patterns by Eric and Elisabeth Freeman. It uses Java as the "medium of instruction", but PHP 5's object syntax is similiar enough to Java that you should be able to grasp what they are doing in the examples.

Looks it up on amazon.com

Ah, I think I have seen this book at my local bookstore (but had not thought of looking through it). It got very favorable reviews I see.. Will definitely have to have a look through it. If it furthers me in OOP, then all the better.