Cap Ologist
03-29-2005, 11:35 PM
A couple of weeks ago I discovered an online gangster game. After spending some time playing this game I realized that I was becoming intrigued with the php language. I went to Half Price Books and looked through some resources there and then Barnes and Noble.
A couple of months ago, I started another programming dynasty that died. Hopefully, I'll have better success with this.
I'm working through a book called "Sam's Teach Yourself PHP, mySQL and Apache". I've used books from Sam's Teach Yourself series in the past, and have found that they explain things in a way that I can grasp.
The first couple of chapters deal with setting up a programming environment on your computer/server. I'm not going to bore you with too many of those details.
Chapter 5 is where I'm going to pick up. This chapter si called "The Building Blocks of PHP". It deals mainly with variables and data types. I read through it pretty quickly, alot of it was familiar with a few changes that I picked up pretty quickly. One thing I like about PHP already is how it handles variables. In other languages that I have experience with like Java and Visual Basic, you have to declare what kind of data type the variable you are using is. For example, in Visual Basic, I would write Dim nNumber As Integer. In PHP however, variables are prefaced with a $ and the language figures out what data type should be used. I'm going to use a naming convention I've used in the past with my variables so that I can easily identify what's going on. I'm going to add the lowercase first letter of the data type immediately after the $, so if I was planning on the variable referring to a string, it would be known as $sName.
Chapter 6 is about Flow Control Functions such as if-thens, loops, and switches. This is a chapter I paid a little more attention to because there are some technical nuances that are different from Visual Basic, which is the language I have been working with most recently. Most of this was still pretty straightforward.
Chapter 7 deals with functions which are used in programs to pass information to different parts. This was one of the hardest things for me to understand several months ago, but having been exposed to Java and Visual Basic, it was pretty easy for me to see what was going on here.
Here (http://www.dreamjobdevelopments.com/history.html) is a sample PHP program that I've written. It will tell you the final score of all 39 Super Bowls. I wrote to practice some of these things that I've been learning (declaring variables, a switch loop, and passing of data) while using somethings (forms) that I've mainly skimmed over. Forms are still a chapter or two away. So go ahead, and check out my Super Bowl program.
That's what I've gone over the last two days. My plan is to work through at least one chapter a week. Right now, most of the material is somewhat familiar, but I'm anticipating some difficulty especially when I get into work with databases. I haven't messed with databases in any form since my sophomore year of college about 7 years ago.
A couple of months ago, I started another programming dynasty that died. Hopefully, I'll have better success with this.
I'm working through a book called "Sam's Teach Yourself PHP, mySQL and Apache". I've used books from Sam's Teach Yourself series in the past, and have found that they explain things in a way that I can grasp.
The first couple of chapters deal with setting up a programming environment on your computer/server. I'm not going to bore you with too many of those details.
Chapter 5 is where I'm going to pick up. This chapter si called "The Building Blocks of PHP". It deals mainly with variables and data types. I read through it pretty quickly, alot of it was familiar with a few changes that I picked up pretty quickly. One thing I like about PHP already is how it handles variables. In other languages that I have experience with like Java and Visual Basic, you have to declare what kind of data type the variable you are using is. For example, in Visual Basic, I would write Dim nNumber As Integer. In PHP however, variables are prefaced with a $ and the language figures out what data type should be used. I'm going to use a naming convention I've used in the past with my variables so that I can easily identify what's going on. I'm going to add the lowercase first letter of the data type immediately after the $, so if I was planning on the variable referring to a string, it would be known as $sName.
Chapter 6 is about Flow Control Functions such as if-thens, loops, and switches. This is a chapter I paid a little more attention to because there are some technical nuances that are different from Visual Basic, which is the language I have been working with most recently. Most of this was still pretty straightforward.
Chapter 7 deals with functions which are used in programs to pass information to different parts. This was one of the hardest things for me to understand several months ago, but having been exposed to Java and Visual Basic, it was pretty easy for me to see what was going on here.
Here (http://www.dreamjobdevelopments.com/history.html) is a sample PHP program that I've written. It will tell you the final score of all 39 Super Bowls. I wrote to practice some of these things that I've been learning (declaring variables, a switch loop, and passing of data) while using somethings (forms) that I've mainly skimmed over. Forms are still a chapter or two away. So go ahead, and check out my Super Bowl program.
That's what I've gone over the last two days. My plan is to work through at least one chapter a week. Right now, most of the material is somewhat familiar, but I'm anticipating some difficulty especially when I get into work with databases. I haven't messed with databases in any form since my sophomore year of college about 7 years ago.