[Watford] PHP

[walt]

Many thanks again Yvan. If you fancy an outing to the nightlife of Leavesden
I can offer you a lift in my 'Ford Fiesta' :-)  I grant you it isn't easy to
get to but depending on where you live in Ricky, we can take the M25 to
Huntonbridge and its just up the road from there.

I live near Northwood by the way so its not too much of a treck to Ricky.

Walter
-----Original Message-----
From: watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
[mailto:watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Yvan Seth
Sent: 01 December 2007 19:13
To: watford at mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [Watford] PHP

<quote who="walt">
> So now to learning the language.  There must be oodles of 
> documentation on the web. But I may be picking your brains later in my 
> learning curve if thats ok.

My PHP knowledge is rather rusty, been 4 years since I did much with it.
(I'm more of a C/C++ developer (who also does a lot of Perl/Python utility
scripting) and only has a peek at web development every once in a while.)
But it sounds like there are others on this list who can help, and the
online community is a virtually infinite resource!  

> BTW: I am atheist with the motto live and let live.  So you have no 
> worries on that front.  I have read quite a lot about it all and 
> although some of it is well over my head I figured PHP looks like my 
> best bet to start with.  Should I get to point of where I start seeing 
> the advantages of the other technologies I will have no hesitation in 
> using them.

PHP is a good starting point, since it was designed for web development from
the start working with it has a pretty "seamless" quality.
Choosing between PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby/etc is more a matter if aesthetics
these days as they all have all the functionality you'd ever want, massive
communities built around them, and a handful of "frameworks" up their
sleeves.  Like Neel said, probably best to stick with one to start with :)

> I will need database access and if frameworks - django can do that I 
> might well switch to that in a few weeks.  I'll check it out.

PHP can deal just fine with any database you'd care to use and there's a
heap of existing work to build on.  Zend, as mentioned by Neel, is certainly
worth looking at.

> Are you going to the meeting (6th December) next week?

Not sure.  I don't drive and have to come up from Ricky, the location seems
a little out of the way.

Cheers
-Yvan