PHP

[RelaxRelapse]

For everyone who knows PHP how long did it take to learn everything, and make it stick? a week? a month? a year? I don't know? I've been learning from W3school (I think thats what its called) . SO anybody?

[Ash Fohx]

I learned what I know in about three months but I'm kinda slow when it comes to such things. ^^;

 

I couldn't learn crap from W3Schools though. Check out DayDream Graphics for some cool tutorials. They'll teach you PHP as you make working scripts, so you can learn how to make use of the knowledge you gain. ^^

[Quantum Media LLC]

I don't know much about php. HTML Coding I learned pretty much everything i needed to within a month, and of course learning new stuff each day as i go.

[Asgard]

Ugh, I never seem to be able to finish any tutorial. Every time when I'm halfway I need to do other things (learn for tests, write papers for school) and when I'm done with these things, I have to start all over again, because I forget most things . I also have the problem of not being able to read huge boring texts about what a certain piece of code does and how you should use it. Fortunately, I've found PHP 101: PHP For the Absolute Beginner. I don't know if it's good, but at least it's easy to read and follow. It's only the basic stuff I think, so after this one I'll have to find more tutorials, or borrow a book about PHP at the local library.

 

And how look it takes... I've read somewhere it takes about ten years before you totally master something, but I think it takes a few months to master the basics of PHP.

[ocustruct]

Hmm, well It took me about 2months to finish the w3schools PHP tutorial at an average of studying about 4hrs a week. I probably learn at about an average pace. I only did the PHP tutorial down to the end of the mysql part. So an an extremely rough ballpark estimate I'd say the PHP tutorial took me about 30-40hrs of total study time for the tutorial. But as for truly being fluent in the language I still have a long ways to go.

[naynesh]

2-3 months because thats only if you study at the least 3 hours a week.

[ShannenName]

I picked it up in the first week I started reading WC3 tutorials and I only read a few pages, and the rest I taught myself!

[chachi]

i took a web programming class in school, but we only covered it for about a month. one of the main reasons i joined this site was so i could get reacclimated with it. it's a pretty easy language once you learn some of it's annoying tendencies. (i wish i could elaborate on that, but it's been so long since i've used PHP that i forget what the annoying tendencies were! )

[AverageJoe]

Tizag.com has some great tutorials.

 

BTW, it's not learning the language that takes the time, it's actually putting it to use. It depends on what your talking about, Hello world, or making a complex content management system. The first could take a minute, the later, years.

 

Joe

[shakil]

For everyone who knows PHP how long did it take to learn everything, and make it stick? a week? a month? a year? I don't know? I've been learning from W3school (I think thats what its called) . SO anybody?

 

It took me about a month to grasp the main concepts of PHP programming, but that is only because of my prior experience of HTML. For any one who doesn't know much about web development, I recommend first learning some basics of HTML and then learning web scripting languages (PHP, Python, Perl etc).

[TylerDiaz]

Ive been practicing for 6 years. I got stucked after 3 months.

Its easy if you take it step by step.

[andy]

php.net is probably the best place to look for information.

 

The manual is a real must. There's little chance you will remember every function call and every parameter it takes. The library is a little too big.

 

How long it takes to learn varies wildly. Whether you have programmed before makes a big difference.

 

Be careful with web tutorials some of the miss out important stuff. I wrote my first database driven dynamic site, and then as I read up more on PHP I found I had huge security vulnerabilities in my site. Luckily I don't think anyone noticed. Plus there wasn't anything much they could do maybe wipe the database and execute DB queries but the data wasn't that important it was a short quiz.

 

Biggest tip is think about security. Attackers won't go easy on you just because you're learning.

Remember validate inputs preferably using white listing. Escape all outputs (sending to a database is an output).

 

Oh and ask questions if you get stuck!

[Kelso]

The books by Larry Ullman are really great. It took me a few weeks to learn PHP, SQL, and .htaccess. He's pretty good, even for n00bs like me

[arunsonnet]

 

I learnt the basics using a book for about a month and now learning the advancrd concepts now and then....

[ShannenName]

I think Teach Yourself PHP in 10 minutes is a good book and it's categorized into 10 minute sessions so you don't have to sit there for long amounts of times, just session my session..