Should I learn PHP Object Oriented Programming?

php-phan

So here is my situation. Im 17 and for the last three oh so years I have been learning how to program. Well the last year I have been working on PHP, MySQL by making a Social Networking site. I have been doing it like in my spare time after school and what not, so next year for my Senior year I am going to be working on it full time like Tuesday and Thursday. So my question is, should I invest in learning Object Oriented Programming and try an rewrite all my code. I really dont mind rewriting it, if it makes my program better I will do it. Will it make my code more efficient? When I am looking at some code from Elgg, or the Wordpress code, its all php but Object Oriented. Is this the best way to program large projects like this? What are the pros and cons? Thanks to anyone who replies

Weedpacket

Why not?

NogDog

OOP does not make the program itself run any better (at least not necessarily). It's main benefits are to make an application more manageable, easier to maintain and easier to modify; with the added benefit of making its component parts more easily re-used in other applications.

Start here.
Read this.
Then read this.
Buy this.

php-phan

Awesome thanks! Reading material is always the best haha :-)

BuzzPHP

Yep, learn OOP. Its pretty easy. Just a change in thinking.

Buzz PHP does OOP with ease.
http://www.buzzphp.com/

At the end of the day it just means:

strlen(s) is replaced with s.len();

But, internally, OOP brings a lot of very cool concepts like overriding, inheritance and polymorphism. But, keep control. Ive seen a lot of OOP programming that is just ****e.

Rule of thumb: If it doesn't make it easier, then dont use it.

laserlight

BuzzPHP wrote:
At the end of the day it just means:

strlen(s) is replaced with s.len();

That is just syntactic sugar. strlen(s) is not necessarily not OO in design, and s.len() is not necessarily OO in design.

BuzzPHP

Mmm, I think that was my point, wasn't it?

"At the end of the day" = "is just syntactic sugar"

OOP Design is another story. ie: Should a feature be written as a function or a class?

If you look at Buzz PHP, all my classes are in files starting with "C" and all my functions are in classes starting with "F"

http://www.buzzphp.com/

The question of should a feature be written as a "function" or a "class" is a difficult one. Often it does come down to syntactic sugar. ie: How do you want a feature exposed to the API programmer? There is no one correct answer.

But, to the original question, "Should I learn OOP", the answer is yes.

To the question, "Should I learn OO Design?" The answer is, um, yes, but it is very very hard to come up with good OO designs.