Whats the best way to learn php?
 

I can read and understand the logic of php when i read other ppls coding.

It gets alil difficult when they do arrays, but whatever the case.. I was wondering whats the best way to go about learning php? just write it and see where it goes?

tips? tricks? etc? :D

buy a big ass book to use as reference other then that jump right in :)

I agree, buy yourself some nice reference books, such as the ones from O'Reilly

http://www.oreilly.com/

:thumbsup

Do you want to do something like this? > http://www.connectionmesh.com/?p_id=82

As you can see, I'm a master coder. If you want to do something like that, we'll need to read a few books on the subject.

Yo! I am also trying to learn it right now. Here are some tips:

1. Essential PHP Video course, available online on Lynda.com (25 bucks per month, well worth it - and you get to view all other tutorial aswell)

2. There is a VTC (the company who makes them) video course on php + mysql floating around on P2P - get it.

3. Download any of the hundreds of ebooks available. Visit the millions of php tutorial sites around:)

That makes you a master coder?

There's tons of references online to negate needing to buy a book.

Just start simple and work your way up to harder stuff. I think the best way is to give YOURSELF projects that you want to do and figure out how to do them:

Say start off with just reading a directory list of images from a folder and being able to display sets of 10 on a page with links to the other pages. Shit like that.

Use code from online tutorials to help achieve your goal, but don't go further until you understand what that code does -- put it into a function of your own, for instance.

The hardest thing for me was getting associative arrays down, just cuz they seemed so foreign. Once I got over that (albeit simple thing, now that I look back) everything else didn't seem so hard to understand -- I guess I wasn't "afraid" of the language anymore.

trial and error, good luck!

That's right!

everything is easy except dynamically generated multidimensional arrays, those always give me a headache :thumbsup

learn the concepts, too...
 

<soapbox>
If you have trouble understanding arrays, then you shouldn't be programming. You always need to understand the concepts in order to fully understand your own code, let alone looking at someone elses. If you can't fully understand arrays, then how will you ever grasp the concept of OOP.

The great thing about php is that it is really easy to get into. The bad thing about php is that it is really easy to get into. I have seen so much bad programming that it would be comical if I wasn't paid to actually fix all of the stupid designs that other people made.

If you really want to learn how to be a good programmer, I would recommend finding a really good online tutorial, and working with a tutor or a friend who can really explain the concepts to you so you fully understand the methodology. You might also want to try learning C++ (will help will memory management) and Java (will help with OOP). Both Java and C++ have a similar syntax to PHP. If you have the time, you may want to try a community college programming course to give you a solid background.

As was said before, if you're just copying and pasting tutorial code into your own, it won't further your understanding of the principals of language. Learning the syntax is easy -- it's the principals of programming that you also need to become familiar with as well.

Good luck, and may the shwartz be with you.
</soapbox>

Read Read Read Read Read Read Read. 90% of PHP code out there is pure total crap. Chances are if youre learning it by reading someone elses code, its like learning nutrition from.. say.. Rosanne Arnold. I know its always tempting to try to learn as fast as you can and jump in and start coding right away, but take your time and really learn it. Most PHP programmers dont.

PHP's curse is that its a little too easy, people pick up a copy of 'Teach your self web programming with PHP in 24 hours!" and think they are master web programmers. Most PHP programs are a mess of spahgetti code that rivals even the messiest perl code.

If you have the cash to shell out 20 bux a month I would suggest a subscription to safari.oreilly.com. Its a digital library of Oreilly books (other publishers as well) with books on all aspects of programming.

And if its web programming your into, Im gonna take this opportunity to plug ruby on rails. My new favorite web development framework. Ruby is also a much better general purpose programming language than PHP, IMHO.

rubyonrails.org

pussies

http://www.php.net/manual/en/

always read the comments. if you need more, find another job or hire someone else to do it