[xubuntu-users] Help! Steep learning curve ahead

[Radomir Dopieralski]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:58 AM, Pasi Lallinaho
<pasi at shimmerproject.org> wrote:
> On 05/16/2012 03:19 AM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>> I've got a web application that has been running in Apache for years
>> as a CGI program written mostly in Python.
>>
>> I'm wanting to upgrade it to Ajax, and the main resource I have for
>> that is O'Reilly's book "Adding Ajax", which presents all examples
>> with PHP.  I know nothing about PHP except the name and that it's
>> server side stuff embedded in the web pages.  I know nearly nothing
>> about Javascript, but I have used a couple of tiny canned scripts.
>>
>> -- I need to know if PHP is the right way to go before I commit to
>> learning all this.  The pages are now being made by a Python program
>> of about 3000 lines, and uses a database (homegrown based on GDBM, but
>> likely to change to something relational, maybe Postgresql).
>
> PHP is very widely used with web applications. There's a neverending
> debate if it's good or bad (just try Googling!), but I suppose it all
> comes down to how you use it – bad programmers write bad code etc...
> Personally, I think PHP is a good choice for a web application.
>
>> -- I need to know what resources I should consult for programming in
>> PHP (or whatever).  For starters, how do I learn PHP (or whatever).
>
> The PHP documentation [1] is simply said fantastic! Since PHP reads
> close to english (all the function names and so!), the learning curve is
> relatively light.
>
> If you learn by reading books well, then get hold of a book. If web
> documentation is fine, then you should be fine with the online PHP
> documentation alone.
>
>> -- I need to know if there's anything more to adding PHP to my apache
>> than getting libapache2-mod-php5.
>
> You should install the php5-package too.
>
>> -- I just plain need advice.  I'm flying solo here, since I'm retired
>> and this is a hobby.
>
> While you're at it, look at jQuery [2] too.
>
> Cheers,
> Pasi
>
> [1] http://php.net/docs.php
> [2] http://jquery.com/ (the site seems to be slow right now though)

I just want to add one link to the bunch:
http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

-- 
Radomir Dopieralski, http://sheep.art.pl