Should I jump on learning OO PHP or try the old school PHP?

[sushi]

I am a web designer, not that great but still a designer nevertheless. I have been hoping to create some web apps for some time and since I can't really afford to get them made from some developer I thought I should start learning some development of my own. As I already know the dead-simple basics of PHP I am thinking of exploring that further. What'd you hackers think?

Try not to make it a war between ROR, Java and PHP here.

[evlapix]

I'm not sure what "old school PHP" is, since I'm only 3 years in the industry. But what I can tell you, is that when I learned OOP - first in AS3, and then in PHP - I was able to pick up other languages MUCH quicker.

I'm not entirely certain, but I can't think of a single disadvantage to learning OOP. I'd actually be interested to know if there where some.

I'd also add.. Learning PHP as a first language slowed me down a bit when exploring other languages. PHP is very forgiving. If you're just learning to learn.. Maybe you should consider starting with a language that's much more strict; Python or Perl in my case. This way you focus on the concepts instead of the practices. PHP is one of those.. "more than one way to skin a cat" languages. Or at least more than most (from my experience).

[sushi → evlapix]

As far as I know OO PHP has only two disadvantages, one that it is sometimes slower than the normal method. The second being that it is not recommend for projects that are just about 3-4 pages of code. OO PHP saves time when your code is gonna be really lengthy otherwise you end up writing more code if the app you are making is a very simple one.

Thanks for your inputs.

[frankus]

I was a PHP programmer between 1999 and 2008 (and have dabbled in it since then), and I never quite figured out what OO PHP was good for, other than writing your own half-baked database wrapper.

If you're using OO PHP for basic web apps it will probably be in the form of someone else's more-fully-baked database wrapper (CodeIgniter, CakePHP, etc.) but you don't actually need to know much OOP to use them.