OGirly Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Hello I guess a little about my background? I'm new to PhP, but I do have a background in C, C++ etc. I have a few certs mostly through school :\ (linux+, microsoft vista lol b/c we all had to get it for school etc), and a BA in computer Science. I've sorta done the quick O'Reilly training as far as any studying of php (learning PhP5, and Programming PhP are the two titles I've read so far :\), as well as working through the php.net manual...so I really do mean I'm NEW to PhP. I'm extremely excited about it though (a friend of mine was like "why don't you know this already?") a few weeks ago, and she let me borrow her books. I"m hooked! I sorta know Ruby, and have a background in Pearl and just never got around to learning this; but php seems like a lot of fun to work with. For some reason I've gotten off to a rough start with it, but after playing around with it I am starting to feel really dumb for not learning this sooner I have some background with MySql as well, but my programming education wasn't really "web" intensive...so forgive me if I make some errors :\ A friend of mine and I are working on a website together as a "learning project" as we both try to get a better grasp of the language so please don't be surprised if you see a few post from me in the next few weeks. Currently a homemaker while my partner is finishing up her school simply because a computer science degree is not usable for much in Ohio compared to San Fran where we are originally from. Moving back in a year though, thank god! So I'm hoping to get a good understanding of PhP before heading back out west. I'm a rambler...if you can't tell...so I try to keep my posts mainly to code bah! or else you'd hear whole my life story lol....22yrs...hmm..that's about it? Just felt like saying hey and giving a quick introduction. Looking forward to getting to know some of you ~alice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devWhiz Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Alice! Cute name ;P Welcome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OGirly Posted April 18, 2011 Author Share Posted April 18, 2011 haha thanks! The name was a nickname I picked up in school since I was the only girl in my Comp Theory class, and I'm well sorta super girly (I think it may have annoyed some of them lol). It's stuck though, and I've sorta adopted it as a forums/net/gamertag lol Nice to meet you (btw I must have watched clueless about 100 times when I was younger!! although not sure if that's the origin of your name ). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Some advice: Bookmark the following link: http://www.php.net/quickref.php It's a list of every built-in PHP function, with each function name being a link to a description of what it does followed by code examples. It's an invaluable resource. While PHP is dynamically typed, if you dive into OOP with PHP you'll see that type still matters. So, try not to forget the good habits you learned with C++. Remember that HTTP is stateless. Things only happen when a new request is made by the server. Because of that, you're better off doing all of your data processing first, outputting results/HTML only at the end. Even though PHP makes it easy (and, indeed, a ton of tutorials actually encourage one) to jump back and forth between HTML and PHP in a file, it's really a bad practice to get into. For your own debugging/maintenance sanity, I suggest making your scripts top heavy. Finally, never use 'global'. If you see a tutorial that uses it, run. Every time a newbie PHP coder uses 'global', God kills a kitten. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Hi Alice, welcome to PHPFreaks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OGirly Posted April 19, 2011 Author Share Posted April 19, 2011 Every time a newbie PHP coder uses 'global', God kills a kitten. Ha! I will avoid this for sure then. Thanks so much for the advice, it helps! Esp. the manual I may be adding that to my bookmark bar for a few weeks The top down approach makes a whole lot of sense, I know I was having problems before that I think we're caused by jumping in and out of queries and printing data... It's a new structure to get used to. I"m starting to see though, why php has such a huge following; as you learn it, it's really really intuitive to start working with (lol..not of the libary functions have "strange" names ). Thanks all for the kind welcome, I'm really looking forward to getting a better understanding of PhP with your guys help! ~alice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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