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I think this is the right forum to post this question, but if not i apologize.
Anyway, this week i started reading online about programming and java seemed like a good place to start. I read through some tutorials online and wrote some simple programs ("Hello World", simple user input math computations, etc), and began to get a grip on the very basic parts of the language. Today i was talking to the CTO of a company (to my chagrin i forget the name ) and he said that what i should really get into first is programming with php and the LAMP stack of software.. now i have been researching it for a while and have installed php, mysql, and eclipse IDE but i am finding it diffuicult to get my hands on some good beginner-oriented documentation on programming with php.
Can anyone recommend a book that i can order, or a well known online source of information for a php programming newbie? when i look on amazon there are so many different books that i could possibly order but i was wondering if one of them is more or less the standard for programming beginners.
Thanks in advance.
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the actual PHP docs are a pretty good place to start: http://www.php.net/manual/en/
w3schools also have a decent beginners resource at http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
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I agree with kennyd's recommendations. Not so much with your CTO acquaintance's -- unless you really are interested in web development. If your goal is really to learn to program, I would stick with the Java or perhaps try Python or Ruby.
Last edited by ewaller (2011-06-28 21:57:17)
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I would say that the most important thing for you to learn now is how to program. You can do that with any language, and once you understand how to think in the appropriate way you can pick up other languages (in the same paradigm) with relative ease. So, pick a language you like the look of (such as Java), and practice programming and solving problems, once you are confident doing that look at another language.
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Thanks everyone for your responses. I think I'm going to stick to Java for a bit and see if i can get a good grasp on the language first.
the actual PHP docs are a pretty good place to start: http://www.php.net/manual/en/
w3schools also have a decent beginners resource at http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
kennyd, thanks for the URLs, ill check them out when i have some time to sit down and work.
Now does anyone know of any well known beginner-oriented Java documentation? Paid is fine, as long as its not too expensive.
Thanks again.
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If you want to know how to program:
Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist [1]
They use Python, that will make it easier, but the goal is not teach Python, but Algorithm and Data Structure, with that will be much easier learn anything else.
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Can anyone recommend a book that i can order, or a well known online source of information for a php programming newbie? when i look on amazon there are so many different books that i could possibly order but i was wondering if one of them is more or less the standard for programming beginners.
I can only recommend that you ignore 98% of the PHP code that you see on the internet, as most of it is really awful. The official documentation is a good place to start, but try to take the comments posted with a rather large grain of salt, since they're not really screened for quality.
IMHO php is not a good first language for this reason alone, because you'll learn bad habits from reading most other php code. You'd be better learning a language where you know you can find good examples and instructions. Java is probably one of those (not really sure, I don't know much about the Java community), but so is C (K&R), Python (still have to be careful, but the official documentation is excellent, so just read that after reading tutorials), and to a lesser extent Javascript (Javascript: The Good Parts) if you're ever interested in learning that.
So, go ahead and learn Java first if that's what you want, but be careful about blindly accepting examples. Always cross reference everything you see with official documentation/style guides/etc...
P.S. if you're really into math you could also look into learning Scheme as a first language. There's tons of great resources for learning it. e.g. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
Last edited by Nisstyre56 (2011-07-04 02:42:45)
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