why did you learn php?

[kellz]

Everyone's story is kinda interesting..

 

My story isss:

 

Once upon a time there was a girl sitting at a table in school having lunch, who listened to a small group of geeks talking about something called PHP and how kewl it was. First she thought it must have been some kind of computer game, So When she arrived home that day, she got on her computer and searched the internet for this PHP thing and it turned out to be some kind of writing that makes the computer do stuff, so, she thought "wow I can actually do more than just chat and play ping pong". She spent hours learning how to start making things with it and where to get it, She finally found something called EasyPHP and it sounded like everything she needed, She downloaded it and read the manual that took 4 hours^^. Every single thing that she read was nothing she'd ever heard of before and that made everything VERY confusing!, in some days she finally had the courage to approach her IT teacher at lunch time and asked him if he knew of this PHP thing, He looked at her as if to say "what? are you serious?" and he said "ughh....yes...why?" so they sat down for a little while, he explained where she should go and how she should start. That day she attempted to talk to the geeks but they ignored her and walked away. She went home every day and studied so much that she never saw any of her friends for a whole week! Back at the dinner table she sat next to the geeks again while her friends were sitting somewhere else and 1 of the geeks said something about PHP, she quickly took the opportunity to jump into the convo and try to impress them with her tiny little knowledge of PHP and computers in general.. they looked at her in the same kind of way as the IT teacher did, afterall, what would a girl that hangs out with all the popular people be doing talking to geeks?? plus she used to treat them like they didn't even exist. Sooo yea the story end's there but she's still learning and now she knows more about PHP than the geeks that was talking about it does! lol

 

it's kinda freaky to see myself turn into a geek so i try to convince myself that I'm not! I used to be the avarage person that was out alot and now all I do is sit here apart from going to school.. 

[~n[EO]n~]

Everyone's story is kinda interesting..

 

Yeah, yours is truly interesting... 

[neylitalo]

it's kinda freaky to see myself turn into a geek so i try to convince myself that I'm not! I used to be the avarage person that was out alot and now all I do is sit here apart from going to school.. 

 

You say geek like it's a bad thing - there are two fields that you want to get into right now, and they're technology and healthcare. People are always going to get sick and technology isn't going to go away. I used to be an outsider in school, because I didn't have all the traditional toys and hobbies (motor vehicles and girls, respectively), but I realized that it was OK - whenever their computers broke, I could charge them $40 an hour to fix it! And now that I'm slowly building up a reputation in the "system consulting, system service, and internet presence" markets, I can charge even more. (Loosely translated, that means that I help people figure out what computers they want, I fix their computers when they break, and I can make them a website.)

 

I started being a geek at the ripe old age of two years - just old enough to watch in awe as my uncle played a flight simulator game. He paused the flight, hopped down from his chair to take a break, and I hopped up and landed his plane neatly on the runway for him. (I, personally, don't know how much truth is in that, but all parties present at the time swear to it.)

 

After that, it was on to bigger and better things in my later single-digit years - breaking, fixing, and building computers of my own. In my pre-teen years, I was making simple HTML websites using a combination of Notepad and Frontpage, simply because I didn't know any better. I took an A+ Certification course in high school, figured out that I knew far more than the teacher, and switched to programming.

 

A VB 6 class was my first programming experience outside of Javascript, and then I learned a bit of Java, but promptly decided that they were both something to stay away from. I spent six years as a student network administrator while I was in junior high & high school, and worked with an older student who built an amazing website using PHP. I wanted to do that, too, so I bought a book, installed IIS, and went to work. (I'd like to say that I was possessed by the evil spirit of Steve Ballmer himself at the time, and have since seen the light.) And now I've been a professional PHP developer for the past three years.

[zq29]

it's kinda freaky to see myself turn into a geek so i try to convince myself that I'm not! I used to be the avarage person that was out alot and now all I do is sit here apart from going to school.. 

 

Welcome to 2007, geeks are cool now. (Finally!)

[kellz]

it's kinda freaky to see myself turn into a geek so i try to convince myself that I'm not! I used to be the avarage person that was out alot and now all I do is sit here apart from going to school.. 

 

Welcome to 2007, geeks are cool now. (Finally!)

 

I wish everyone else thought that^^ I'm already friends with the people that usually pick on the geeks so they can't exactly pick on me^^ lol and they know not to aswell!

 

1 of the people in my class tried to say something about me being a geek but I just made him look like an idiot infront of everyone lol, not that it was very hard considering he was already 1^^

[GingerRobot]

I took an A+ Certification course in high school, figured out that I knew far more than the teacher, and switched to programming.

 

Oh so familiar. The IT department at my school is an absolute joke. It's pretty much entirely staffed by games/PE teachers who really haven't got a clue when it comes to computers.

 

in some days she finally had the courage to approach her IT teacher at lunch time and asked him if he knew of this PHP thing, He looked at her as if to say "what? are you serious?" and he said "ughh....yes...why?" so they sat down for a little while, he explained where she should go and how she should start.

 

If i'd attempted to talk to my IT teacher about PHP then i would have recieved a completely blank look - HTML was too much for him. In fact, i've just remembered a little story. One IT 'lesson' we were doing something rather pointless and my teacher was making something which he claimed to be a website. His question to me: 'So, if i want to get this actually on the internet, i go to File->Save As right? ' Needless to say, i struggled to keep a straight face. Hosting and domain names were a bit of a new concept for him.

[kellz]

 

If i'd attempted to talk to my IT teacher about PHP then i would have recieved a completely blank look - HTML was too much for him. In fact, i've just remembered a little story. One IT 'lesson' we were doing something rather pointless and my teacher was making something which he claimed to be a website. His question to me: 'So, if i want to get this actually on the internet, i go to File->Save As right? ' Needless to say, i struggled to keep a straight face. Hosting and domain names were a bit of a new concept for him.

 

Some of my teachers do that too but it's actually a catch, They expect you to agree with them and not argue with them.. And when you agree with them they say "wrong!..." so never agree! lol even if it sounds like a stupid question they usually do it to like catch you out. 

[roopurt18]

I started being a geek at the ripe old age of two years - just old enough to watch in awe as my uncle played a flight simulator game.

 

Same age as me.  I used to play Pac Man on the Atari 2600 on the strawberry setting (fastest possible) and I could go for quite a while before losing.

 

My parents tell me that when company would come over, sometimes they'd try to humor me by playing the game with me.  But then I would do better than them and say, "You suck.  You're an adult.  You should do better."

 

My parents still laugh when they bring it up, so I guess they've always thought it was pretty funny.

 

(edit) I learned PHP so I could make a web site for the WoW guild I lead.

[KevinM1]

This will probably be a long post, so feel free to go the tldr; route.

 

Like I said in the 'Get to know your fellow coder' thread, I was born physically disabled.  I use an electric wheelchair for mobility.  Obviously, with the limitations imposed on me because of my disability, any employment I could possibly obtain would have to be something far more mental than physical.  Going into some computer-related field seemed to be the obvious choice, as I've been using some form of computer since I was 3 or 4 years old.  I still remember playing those crappy edutainment games on my family's VIC-20 in the living room.  Those games helped me to learn reading and math at an early age.

 

I actually went into college to get my computer science degree.  Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that there's a big difference between knowing how to use a computer, and knowing how to successfully program one.  I did all right in my intro C++ classes, but everything quickly came screeching to a halt when I got to the assembly/low-level C programming class.  I took that class twice, and failed both times.  Deciding to not waste what college I had already completed, I decided to get a quick and simple liberal arts degree and take the one and only course on web development my college offered, which was basically a survey of website development course.  We spent about a week on each topic -- XHTML, JavaScript, DHTML, Perl, and, honestly, that's about it.  I graduated in the winter of 2004 with my bachelors in communication, and two minors -- one for music, one for computer information and technology.

 

While in the latter days of my college career, I noticed that my friend -- who also failed out of computer science, only to move on and get a degree in anthropology -- was doing some freelance scripting while we were hanging out in the Student Environmental Action Coallition/Peace & Justice League office (damn hippie ).  I was fascinated, as the scripting language he was using allowed him to get his chocolate in my peanut butter, and my peanut butter in his chocolate...err, I mean, it allowed him to switch from script to markup and back again (the food joke is me trying to parody a TV ad that airs here in the States).  He told me that it was PHP, and I decided to start learning it.  This was back in 2002 or so.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to start learning PHP until after I graduated.  Papers, assignments, and a stupid plant biology class took up most of my time at that point.

 

So, I've been learning PHP off and on since 2005.  I've really only put it to good use since last November, as that's when I got my part-time job.  I also fell behind a bit by falling into the same trap that businessman and bills_money fell into -- there were so many technologies I wanted to learn (PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, AJAX, ASP, etc) that I burnt myself out.  In trying to learn everything at once, I really learned nothing at all.

 

I'm pretty good procedurally.  OOP still eludes me, on a tangible level.  I understand (and agree with) its underlying philosophy, but transforming examples in a book into a real system still baffles me.  But I'm sticking with it.  I still tend to lose the forest for the trees every so often.  I'm comfortable doing traditional form/database stuff, but freeze a bit when it comes to building a calendar or pagination.  I'm not good at coming up with my own algorithms for those kinds of things.  Hopefully that'll come with time and experience.

 

So, yeah.  There I am, in text form.

[zq29]

College/School/Teacher related:

I remember when I was at college, I was taking computing (not IT). One day we had a lesson on HTML, I was consulted by the teacher on countless occasions. Things like "is this best practice" et al. To be fair, she did know a fair bit about computing in general, but mainly old school material in both software and hardware. It's odd being the geekiest in a geek class!

[tomfmason]

I started with php after I got out of the US Army almost 3 years ago. I am a semi professional no-limit texas holdem player and needed something that I could use to keep track of my stats. I was given a quote of nearly $10k from a web development firm for what I needed. I thought that was crazy and decided that I would just do it my self. After six months or so I had developed a pretty comprehensive poker statistics application which helped me to improve my game almost 100 fold.

 

[fenway]

I still have never written a single line of php code.

[KevinM1]

I still have never written a single line of php code.

 

You know you want to.  All the cool kids are doing it.  Just a simple

<?php
   phpinfo();
?>

Will suffice.....

 

 

[GingerRobot]

 

If i'd attempted to talk to my IT teacher about PHP then i would have recieved a completely blank look - HTML was too much for him. In fact, i've just remembered a little story. One IT 'lesson' we were doing something rather pointless and my teacher was making something which he claimed to be a website. His question to me: 'So, if i want to get this actually on the internet, i go to File->Save As right? ' Needless to say, i struggled to keep a straight face. Hosting and domain names were a bit of a new concept for him.

 

Some of my teachers do that too but it's actually a catch, They expect you to agree with them and not argue with them.. And when you agree with them they say "wrong!..." so never agree! lol even if it sounds like a stupid question they usually do it to like catch you out. 

 

No, it really wasn't a catch. The IT teachers at my school really are completely useless. Mind you, i suppose that given the content of the 'IT' GCSE here in England, you really don't need to know much about computers. About 80% of the focus is on communication, and the other 20% on basic computer literacy.

 

For example, you could make a website, which looked great and worked well but get no marks for it. Someone else could make a rubbish website which didn't work, and could get lots of marks for it if they explained why it was rubbish, and why it looked bad.

[pocobueno1388]

I used to be into online simulation games, and I would always be so curious on how every little thing worked. I finally got so curious that I started researching, and thats when I found PHP. Just from doing something very basic, yet dynamic, I would be completely amazed and got even more curious on how to do other things. So from that point on I was obsessive with it, I would always have a book or be reading online tutorials. I remember first coming to this forum and looking at the code some of you guys posted, and I was like "WTF! How do any of these people understand this stuff?!"...it literally looked like a bunch of jumbled letter and numbers that made no sense, hah.

[Aureole]

I started learning PHP in the first place so I could make my Website more dynamic, though now I'm starting to take a great interest in Game Development with PHP. I'm still quite new to the language but give it time and a little patience, eh?

 

That's basically it... I'm boring aren't I?

[emehrkay]

I'll have to say it started in like 96 when my math teacher taught me how to program basic little apps in my ti86 (that was some good cheating). I took that to college and wrote c++ applications to help people do their homework (almost got kicked out). Then i wanted to create a website and wanted it to save to a database, a friend told me to look into php and here I am, the php ruler

[teng84]

I'll have to say it started in like 96 when my math teacher taught me how to program basic little apps in my ti86 (that was some good cheating). I took that to college and wrote c++ applications to help people do their homework (almost got kicked out). Then i wanted to create a website and wanted it to save to a database, a friend told me to look into php and here I am, the php ruler

 

men we're almost the same but in my case my professors notice that i do my classmates thesis for $  after graduation and they cant do anything but laugh and told like (where is our commission ) hehe

if they caught me right before graduation men i think  they will kick my ass on that school

[GingerRobot]

I'll have to say it started in like 96 when my math teacher taught me how to program basic little apps in my ti86 (that was some good cheating). I took that to college and wrote c++ applications to help people do their homework (almost got kicked out). Then i wanted to create a website and wanted it to save to a database, a friend told me to look into php and here I am, the php ruler

 

Ah i love my graphical calculator. I still can't quite believe im actually allowed to use it in exams!

[Crew-Portal]

When I was at the age of 14 a friend of mine threw a book at me in library class, this book was called learn javascript in 24 hours. I already knew a little js but decided to look into it a little further. Now I took that book out and read it cover to cover in like 2 days, But once I got to the end I was looking at the other books they offered when I saw this thing called PHP, MySQL And Apache. So I looked into it a little further, and 1.5 years after that fateful day Im still coding PHP and MySQL! 

[kellz]

how long and how much work (stupid question) does it take to be a php/sql developer? I saw that word something, w/e it is.. I guess it's a job in php and sql (duh) is it a good job? like, does it pay well or is it better to just be a hair dresser (thats what i was going to be) and i guess there is SOOOOOO many people doing php stuff that it seems like it would be almost impossible to get noticed when there are so many.

[pocobueno1388]

how long and how much work (stupid question) does it take to be a php/sql developer? I saw that word something, w/e it is.. I guess it's a job in php and sql (duh) is it a good job? like, does it pay well or is it better to just be a hair dresser (thats what i was going to be) and i guess there is SOOOOOO many people doing php stuff that it seems like it would be almost impossible to get noticed when there are so many.

 

The demand for computer related jobs are rising faster than any other job, so choosing a computer related job won't be a bad choice. It's going to take a lot of experience to become any type of programming developer. Basically your going to have to know your shit, and that takes a lot of dedication and practice. If you truly enjoy programming and strive to always be learning then go for a programming job, but if your not completely dedicated and don't love doing it, then I wouldn't recommend it.

[roopurt18]

I don't recommend picking a career based on how much money you expect to earn.  Things change over time.  The demand for programmers today may not be the same as by the time you graduate and get your degree, likewise with the average pay.

 

You need to ask yourself these types of questions.

 

Do I like to be challenged with difficult mental problems on a regular basis?

 

Do I mind if I have to do research to determine the best way to accomplish something I don't currently know how?

 

Do I mind sitting in front of the computer for as long as 12 or 14 hours a day?  (Actual amount of time in front of a computer varies depending on the programming position).

 

I knew quite a few people that loved non-computer fields but went into CS because they heard the demand and money were good.  Well they were filtered out of the program by the more difficult Computer Science courses and switched over to business or IT, as they're closely related but not necessarily as difficult.  The result, they didn't get the degree doing what they expected and they're not doing the other thing that they loved (art, music, whatever).

 

You need to be practical.  For now, if you enjoy programming, then program.  If you still enjoy it a few years from now, consider making a career out of it.  Just remember that you have to enjoy it.

 

You're going to have bosses and / or clients that make you program things that you don't really want to, but if you naturally enjoy programming it makes it slightly less painful.

[zq29]

To be honest, I really can't remember why I started learning PHP, or exactly when either... I learnt HTML when I was about 14, mixed with small amount of CSS and JavaScript. I guess PHP and SQL was a natural progression. I know I learnt from a book called "PHP & MySQL for Dummies" as it's still on my bookshelf, but as for when and why? Can't remember.

 

how long and how much work (stupid question) does it take to be a php/sql developer? I saw that word something, w/e it is.. I guess it's a job in php and sql (duh) is it a good job? like, does it pay well or is it better to just be a hair dresser (thats what i was going to be) and i guess there is SOOOOOO many people doing php stuff that it seems like it would be almost impossible to get noticed when there are so many.

 

I'm not sure at what point you can call yourself a developer. Some might have different opinions on it - It might be when you get to the point where you can build your scripts from scratch without referencing tutorials or modifying other peoples code. Some might say you can call yourself a developer when you're getting paid to develop, or you contribute to (open) projects. There's not a rule.

 

I have no idea how much a hair dresser earns on average, but I'm quite confident its less than the average for a PHP developer. As for impossible to land a PHP developers position, I have the exact opposite opinion - I've been looking to take on a full time developer for a while now and no-one has stepped up to the position.

[roopurt18]

no-one has stepped up to the position.

 

No one or no one qualified?