

Ask HN: Learning PHP - BCGC

I've been programming professionally for more than 10th years, starting with C++ and then Java.<p>I am trying to learn PHP to expand opportunities for my career.<p>What's the best way to learn PHP? Any books do you recommend?<p>(I see there was a discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=401022, but that was almost two years ago.)<p>Thanks!
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jesseditson
Whenever I'm trying out a new language, I usually check if lynda.com has a
tutorial on it. I happen to know that lynda.com does have one on PHP, and if
you learn well with video tutorials, you can get to a pretty good spot with
those tutorials in record time. If I remember right (It was a long time ago
last time I looked at them), they don't get into OOP much, but if you're
coming from C++ and Java, the php docs should probably be enough to help out.
Once you've got the basics down, the best way to learn would be to come up
with a simple project and hack away at it. Build a tiny CMS or a blog, php is
flexible, so you can come up with your own style pretty quickly, and then
learn from your mistakes.

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th0ma5
I highly recommend the PHP official tutorial on their site. I learned PHP more
than 10 years ago, and it is great. Second maybe to the Flash tutorial that
comes with Flash.

It could also be useful to try and use PHP however you can, start writing
shell scripts with it, go and observe the source code of PHP sites and
applications you like.

