Matty Sarro schreef:
Greetings all!
I am still relatively new to any kind of web design or php programming, I'll
be completely honest. I am used to working with C, Perl, Java, and a splash
of C++. PHP and web application development are kind of a new bag for me and
I'm still trying to get my bearings. I see that designing a web application
can involve all of the following: html, javascript, php, sql, ajax, xml,
design patterns, and other things. Its kind of... information overload right
now? For what I want to do I know I'm going to need to learn all of them,
but coming up with a roadmap for "what should I learn first?" is becoming
problematic. I want to start working on projects but I'm just not sure what
order to learn things in. I don't want to come up with something that works,
and then have to re-write it all over again simply because I read a new
chapter in a new book.
I would just like some advice on what order to go about this stuff. Thanks!
HTML, xHTML, XML - the basics of this are simple enough - the intricasies will
show their ugly head as time goes by. outputting something that a browser will
grok
is a piece of cake, in time you'll get the hang of generating output that's
100% valid :-)
javascript - learn as you go, start with cut and paste solutions and work up
from
there as required, plenty of people never bother with javascript at all for
accessibility
reasons. basically anything you want to make dynamic (singing and dancing) on
the clientside
(i.e. in the browser) will require javascript (okay so there is Java and Flash
also buts
that's beside the point)
AJAX (or AJAS ;-) in our neck of the woods) is basically the use of javascript
to
run HTTP requests 'in the background' of a page, i.e. grabbing/sending some
data from the
server without refreshing the page (and then presumably manipulating the
existing page
based on the results of said background request ... AJAX can get fairly
advanced and I think
you'll know when you actually need it.
Design Patterns (there is another current thread about this) - basically it
comes down
to applying known concepts/paradigms/strategies to solve a problem ... patterns
apply to
all walk of programming life ... my guess is you've 'used' them plenty in other
languages even
though you may not have recognized them as such ... writing clear and
maintainable code is probably
the best pattern to apply to development ;-)
PHP, the king of web-development languages, *this is the place to start* if
your interested in
server-side coding (you could specialize in client-side stuff only - there are
plenty that do).
SQL, very shortly after your first php script is up and running you'll be
wanting to
store stuff in a database - SQL is the means to manipulate the data ...
learning SQL, especially
the mySQL variant, will come naturally when you dive into php because the
practical ties
between the 2 are so strong ... what's a dynamic website with out persistent,
changeable data?
rewrite stuff? yes you will, garanteed, many times over. this doesn't ever stop
:-)
apart from the odd occasion when you throw something away and forget it ;-) you
could
consider using perl instead of php ... perl's write-only nature would admonish
you
from any rewriting responsibilities :-P
so basically? start writing some crufty php ... find yourself diving into HTML
and SQL before
you know it and then rewrite the cruft as and when new understanding presents
itself :-) it's
the road most of us walked (except for Tedd, he programmed the Rocks[tm] used
to build the
road)
-Matthew
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