Learning Programming Part 2: Programming Frameworks

A selection of programming language textbooks ...
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(Full disclaimer: I work at Automattic and am a speaker at PHP conferences.)

A couple days ago, Gina Trapani posted an interesting article on learning to program.

This reminds me that some people may take the wrong points away in my last article on the subject, the priority shouldn’t be what language you should learn, but rather, what is going to get you motivated to learn. PHP is a popular language because it naturally invites “immersion” style learning, not because it makes a good teaching language—which it doesn’t. That is, assuming the thing you are immersing in is “building a website”. As I like to say:

PHP is the shortest distance between two points on the web.

In the comments, I wrote:

After [the first] chapter, I’d say [PHP and MySQL Development]offers the most “immersion” gratification (at the least cost) than any other language’s textbook. The chapters are easy and by the end of it you have an eStore written and working from scratch. What do you get at the end of the Learning Python book? And how easy was each subsequent chapter? I’d say much less and much harder.

[Unfortunately,] it’s that first chapter that does the first timer in.

Continue reading about More about learning web programming after the jump.

FOX needs a senior PHP front-end developer

Hmm, it’s been a while since I posted some PHP jobs. (You know this is getting inconvenient. I think I need to just write a job tool for php.net.) Received this rec from a friend filling a position for FOX Interactive Media to work on the American Idol site. They can work in San Francisco, Los Angeles or even Seattle.

(Also, if you are the one flash/actionscript developer out there, contact Diana for positions at FOX sports, etc.)

Contact Diana Schwartz 310.590.4570 or dschwartz at this site.

[Senior Front End Web Developer job description after the jump]Continue reading