At 08:00 PM 1/16/2008, B.A.S. wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I'm trying to move from being a rank beginner to an intermediate
level of programming PHP. While practicing & trying to learn
something new every day, I'm also reading up on security (Essential
PHP Security by O'Reilly & Pro PHP Security by Apress).
Unfortunately, I still have a really tough time trying to work out
the logic of what I want a script to do, and my code is pretty
primitive & verbose because of that (I have to painstakingly step
through each little bit of logic in order to wrap my head around anything).
What I should be doing to get to the next level? Should I read up on
web application design? OOP? Just keep plugging away? What do you
guys use when working out the logic of an application you're
building? I'm guessing that would be some kind of flow chart?
I would join one of the on-line PHP related forums. I joined the
PHPFreaks forum <http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php> 2.5 years
ago and found it very helpful.
What about IDEs? Because of my HTML coding & graphic design
background, I'm still using Dreamweaver--would I perhaps learn
faster or be more productive using Zend Studio (or even something
less expensive like phpDesigner)?
I've never used Dreamweaver, so I can't tell you anything pro or con.
I've used TopStyle Pro, since it's very good at HTML, CSS, & PHP
editing. I would also recommend installing a local copy of
Apache/PHP/MySQL on your everyday computer, so you have a place to
experiment. I use xampp <http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html>
on my Windows XP laptop. I've been able to develop code on Windows
and upload to my Linux host with no problems.
Please forgive the numerous questions, but I'm 40+ years old and
want to approach this professionally, not just be some hack who
writes sloppy code for for beer & pizza money and doesn't care about
the client.
Questions are one of the best ways to learn. And don't worry about
being older, I didn't start to learn PHP until I was almost 50 (47 or
48 to be almost exact).
Ken
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