[WikiEN-l] Re: Learn PHP

[John Lee]

I agree with Sheldon. When I first picked up PHP, the only programming 
language (or something resembling it) I knew was HTML. I had dabbled 
with Perl and C, but they were too complicated to pick up, especially 
for programming on the web. Perl and C are great for use on real 
applications, but PHP is a language designed with the web in mind.

I haven't contributed to any MediaWiki development, sadly, because I'm 
still picking up the language; every time I stare at the code for a 
major PHP application, I get a dreadful headache. Usually it's because 
they use object-oriented PHP, which I haven't really learned yet.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
>> Months? It takes me a few *hours* to be able to create useful code in a
>> new language. A few days and I can embark on significant projects. This
>> isn't about difficulty or time (though I'd not be happy about wasting
>> the time), it's about not wanting to subject myself to the horror that
>> is PHP just to be able to do a couple things with MediaWiki, probably
>> never to touch the code again.
>
>
> Well, it only took *me* a few hours to learn how to create useful code 
> in PHP, and my programming skills are strictly hobbyist level. I 
> worked through a couple of online tutorials, and that was all I 
> needed. PHP is actually a lot like Perl, with somewhat more 
> conventional syntax and a little less emphasis on text processing. I 
> love the way you can use it to drop code right into the middle of 
> HTML. With just a few lines of code you can create an interactive form 
> that queries a database and returns a result. To do the same thing in 
> Perl, you'd typically need one static HTML page and a separate page 
> for the CGI script that processes the form data and returns the 
> result. It can be done, but it's more work. Once I discovered PHP, I 
> stopped using Perl and haven't looked back.
>
> --Sheldon Rampton