Learning PHP

PHP is the world's most popular web development language. Started by Danish-Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 it is now installed on more than 20 million websites and 1 million web servers and counting. 


It is estimated that for every 100 PHP developers, there are 42 Perl developers, 12 Python developers and 4 Ruby developers - PHPs popularity is the central reason why you should consider learning it above all others. 


PHP is the basis of Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Joomla and WordPress so gaining a knowledge of PHP would help you in using these scripts. 


Presumably your are already proficient with CSS and HTML and want to take your web creativity to another level. If you aren't, then stop right here. It's unthinkable to tackle PHP without a firm grounding in HTML and a good knowledge of CSS would be extremely useful. 


You don't have to have a complete knowledge of HTML in order to learn PHP but you certainly need to know the basics - the rest you will pick up in tandem with PHP. For instance, if you use Content Management Systems all the time you'll unlikely to be that familiar with coding forms, but HTML forms are an essential part of PHP and you'll need to be able to create them quickly and without fuss. 


Learning PHP is as hard as you can imagine it to be. You need time and lots of patience and preferably a reality you need to escape from for an inordinate amount of time. It's a good idea to pace yourself and set a two year framework in order to become familiar with the core of the language.


An interesting article here.