Advanced PHP Programming
June 6th, 2010 by CGI & PHP.com
- ISBN13: 9780672325618
- Condition: USED – VERY GOOD
- Notes:
Product Description
Over the past three years PHP has evolved from being a niche language used to add dynamic functionality to small sites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale, business-critical Web systems.The rapid maturation of PHP has created a skeptical population of users from more traditional "enterprise" languages who question the readiness and ability of PHP to scale, as well as a large population of PHP developers without formal computer science backgroun… More >>
Popularity: 13% [?]
Advanced Perl Programming
Core Java, Vol. 2: Advanced Features, 8th Edition
PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide
MySQL Database Design and Tuning
The PHP Programming with MySQL
Advanced Topics in Programming Languages: Java Puzzlers,…
June 6th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
If you are not a moron, you will put this book down after page 17.
Pages 16 and 17 (in the first chapter!!!) have code examples trying to argue the use of for/foreach loops over while loops. They are absolutely absurd. If the opening pages of a book have bogus examples and completely false arguments for saying "one should use foreach over for over while", then what hope does the book have for someone wanting to learn something "advanced"?
I am only submitting this review because of the absurdity of pages 16/17. I can not get past those pages. I can not believe this book has $49.99 on it. If I were a job recruiter, I would use page 16/17 as an idiot test–it has that much value, which might be worth $49.99 to recruiters fending off idiots.
"For the sake of example" can only be used if the example makes some sense. On page 16, the example presents a function "is_prime" that takes a parameter $number and returns true/false if the number is prime. The function uses a "while" loop. The author argues against the use of while loops (versus for loops), and essentially says: if you have a moron add some completely bogus, moronic, idiotic code to your almost nice, relatively efficient, functional function named "is_prime", then a "for" loop would help make that function into "is_odd" with an extraneous for loop that is completely inefficient. The examples (more than ten lines long!) equate to:
function is_prime($number){ //although this is really is_odd
return $number % 2;
}
which has no loops, is way more efficient, and has nothing to do with using for loops over while loops. In this book, we see a bunch of nonsense about (what ought to be for advanced programmers) a TRIVIAL example of control structures (while/for) that are equivalent in most programming languages.
Rating: 1 / 5
June 6th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Excellent book, not only for PHP, but also for any programming language, especially web-developpement languages.
Rating: 5 / 5
June 6th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
This not a terrible book — it's a decent book with a poor title. It should be called something like "A Random Walk Through Web Programming with PHP." There's certainly nothing advanced about it. This book would be ideal for someone who has just learned PHP but lacks any real knowledge of computer science.
Rating: 1 / 5
June 6th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
I know PHP and Linux are a great match but people really do run PHP on Windows as well. This book acts like it is Linux only and never mentions the Windows implementation. Other than that this is great.
Rating: 4 / 5
June 6th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
George Schlossnagle's Advanced PHP Programming is the superbly organized and definitive instructional guide to developing large-scale PHP applications. Comprehensive, expertly detailed, authoritative, "learner friendly", Advanced PHP Programming is an invaluable addition to any professional quality computer science reference collection.
Rating: 5 / 5