From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jul 16 13:05:10 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 305CA37B401 for ; Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:05:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp02.mrf.mail.rcn.net (smtp02.mrf.mail.rcn.net [207.172.4.61]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C48A43FA3 for ; Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:05:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rjhalljr@starpower.net) Received: from 66-44-65-13.s267.tnt6.lnhva.md.dialup.rcn.com ([66.44.65.13] helo=svold.krig.net) by smtp02.mrf.mail.rcn.net with smtp (Exim 3.35 #4) id 19csWR-0006JP-00 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:05:08 -0400 Received: by svold.krig.net (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:05:06 -0400 From: "Bob Hall" Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:05:06 -0400 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20030716200506.GA12683@kongemord.krig.net> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20030715202019.M83992@enabled.com> <20030716095702.GC88187@users.munk.nu> <20030716192817.GA11184@kongemord.krig.net> <20030716194318.GC46001@users.munk.nu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030716194318.GC46001@users.munk.nu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Subject: Re: learning PHP - book idea? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 20:05:10 -0000 On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 08:43:18PM +0100, Jez Hancock wrote: > On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 03:28:18PM -0400, Bob Hall wrote: > > On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 10:57:02AM +0100, Jez Hancock wrote: > > > If you already have the basics down, a good intermediate level book is: > > > > > > PHP Developer's Cookbook, Sterling Hughes, SAMS > > > > I own a copy of that book, and it's terrible. My recommendation is > > to avoid it. I tried to use it a few months ago when I was doing > > extensive work on a site, and everything I tried to use from the book > > was buggy. In some cases, the bugs were obvious and easily fixed, but > > in other cases, they weren't obvious and took time and effort to fix. > > On the other hand, I've had no problems with OReily's PHP cookbook. > In support of the author, he does answer emails very rapidly. In my > experience the majority of the recipes worked perfectly. There was one > specific PEAR class example (Net CURL iirc) which he'd added in the book > but at the time hadn't actually released into the PEAR CVS repo. Oops ;/ I remember having to debug the database abstraction code, although I no longer remember what the problem was. I tried to use other bits of code that turned out to have bugs, none of them involving CURL. I eventually stopped trying to use the SAMS book, and bought the ORielly book instead. I'm sure Mr. Hughes is a good programmer, but I'm guessing that he updated PHP3 code for PHP4 without testing it. For those of us who don't programm PHP full time, this introduces subtle errors that are sometimes hard to spot. Bob Hall