College/Online courses

[rcorlew]

I am wondering if there are any college or online courses or classes that teach php. At my local colleges are I have seen is java and visual basic. I have not even seen any perl classes around me.

 

I was also wondering if they would be better than just spending $200 on some good books and teaching myself?

 

I feel that I am somewhere near the end of the beginner stage and can also work out some good code and have taught myself good coding techniques that make it easy to modify old scripts to maintain them.

[roopurt18]

I took a few programming courses at JC almost a decade ago and I was very pleased with their quality.  However I wouldn't consider taking one now because they're no longer time efficient for me.  A course will draw the learning experience out over the course of a semester and you'll be forced to spend a lot of busy time coding the examples.

 

The way I learn now is I just pick up and plow through a book and skip writing any code or reading the code examples.  My goal is to go through it quickly and make a mental checklist of basic ideas:  the language supports looping, the language supports anonymous functions, the language supports objects, etc.  Then when I want to accomplish a specific task within that language I'll open the book back up, look for a specific example illustrating what I want to do, and just apply it to my current problem.

 

I find this works well with more than just learning a language; I've used the same technique for books on security techniques and database design.

 

Currently, I pick up a book on whatever topic I'm interested in (AJAX atm) and when I get about 60-70% of the way through the book I buy another.  Most of my collection are from O'Reilly, but my AJAX book is from wrox and I'm quite happy with it as well.

 

I also read a few web-related magazines here and there to stay in the loop on what other technologies exist.

 

Ultimately you have to find a learning technique that is cost and time-effective for you.

[rcorlew]

I have been on the ol' learn as the need arises path and have found that to be very fitting.

 

I was asking because some of the people in here are very talented and I was thinking they had to go to school for that.

[roopurt18]

I see your dilemma; unfortunately I don't think you'll find what you're looking for in most books or JC courses.  Most books or classes for learning a language touch on barely more than that language and a few simple scenarios.

 

I think what you really want is a course or book that touches on a high-level concept such as algorithms, theorems, graphs, abstract data types, etc.  I've never really seen any such courses offered at the JC near my house so it may be hard to find an appropriate course that you can easily enroll in.  There are plenty of books out there but most of them read like mud.

 

As an example:

 

Here's the Wiki on Big-O:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation

 

And if you found that enthralling, here's the standard text for computer algorithms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms

 

Most of that material you would never have a need to use in PHP, but suffering through it may allow you to create more efficient programs than the other guy.

 

You could probably go your whole programming life without knowing what Big O is or most of what they teach you in college, but having that knowledge will occasionally give you a big edge over other programmers IMO.

 

The other option would be to look into titles that deal with advanced problem solving or advanced techniques with a particular language.  I've not purchased such a title but I'm sure you could pull some practical information from one.

[rcorlew]

That's pretty much where I am headed now. So I think that I will get a couple of Oreilly refrence manuals and just keep challenging myself. I am not talking about the nOOb create a website with php/mysql stuff, I mean php security and mysql ref. manuals. The php manual already resides on my laptop as chm and that is perfect for me.

 

I guess that when it comes to this line of work people always want to see what you have done and what you can do.