Book recomendation?

Anon

Hi
I have 'beginning php4' by wrox 'core php' and 'the php developers cookbook' and am looking for something to take me a little further, I was thinking of 'professional php prog' also by wrox.

Any opinions or suggestions?

Nick

[deleted]

prof. php prog. seems to be a good book. Personally
I hate books because they usually teach you what the writes think to be important, which is not necessarily what you actually want /need to know.

Also most books give you parts of PHP apps, but never a how to combine the parts into an app.

That makes books good for a knowledge-base once you are developing a project.

Personally I live off the manual, this forum and a few other websites. They contain more than I need to piece my apps together.

spacemax

your absolutly right!

gushy

Vincent is right. Besides I think you have enough books, so stop wasting your money. You've found phpbuilder.com, go look at devshed.com and download the manual, you'll never need anything again. I have one book (which is crap), the rest I learnt from the web and forums.

-- Nick Gushlow

knickerlas

Well,
thst all makes sense, I find I get little out of a book untill I come to develop something that was covered in it. I do find 'beginning php4' a godsend though aswell as 'core php' as it has a good function reference and I have poor vision so it's nice to not allways rely on a screen.
I'd love to know what book you thought was 'crap' Nick, I bought this dreadful thing called 'php fast + easy something' when I first discovered php that I now keep in the loo for emergencies.

Thanks for your opinions guys

Nick

gushy

Well the book I think is crap is one that is supposed to be more advanced, but I find it's a load of waffle and not much help. It's all concepts and strategies and not much action.

I suppose it's quite good if you are 'reading it', but as most books I use are reference items, it's not fit for the purpose for which I bought it. I still use it, but not much.

Anyway it's Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 by Tobias Ratschiller and Till Gerken.

Now that's gonna get me flamed!! Those two guys are behind phpMyAdmin among other projects and run phpwizard.net (there's an overview of the book on their site, read it and decide for yourself).

So here's my get out statement - I know Tobais and Till are very good at what they do, and they know their stuff, but the book was just not compatible with me.

Hoepfully that'll stop the flames. 🙂

Anyway, I hope that helps you.

-- Nick Gushlow

Anon

Books are great - if you can find a good one.

I have "Professional PHP Programming" from Wrox, and I like it. Main advantage of books is that they put different topics together, and they can be used as a good reference.

My suggestion is this. If you know how to work with strings, arrays, databases, oop, and etc. - Do not get a book. Just read the manual and articles. Books are great to start you off.

Another web site that tends to be overlooked on this forum is www.zend.com. This site has a TON of code. (http://www.zend.com/codex.php) All of the code is broken into distinct categories - makes browsing easier. Just read the code, write the code - and you'll be really good.

Another site that has a ton of code is http://px.sklar.com/.

Hope that helps,