5 ms·

So you want to be a PHP Developer?

38 points by JeremyMorgan 12y ago

nodesocket 12y ago
Recommend the Flight (http://flightphp.com/learn http://flightphp.com/learn) framework for creating RESTful APIs in PHP. It is lightweight, flexible, and does routing nicely.
darthdeus 12y ago
Why would I want to be a PHP developer? :O
- hackerboos 12y ago
  Because it still pays and if you are good at it - pays well.
- dirtyphpdev 12y ago
  Because finding a job is incredibly easy. Because it pays well if you know your stuff. Because you don't have to work with people who will judge you based on something as in-significant as what programming language you decide to use.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
JeremyMorgan 12y ago
One of my favorite parts: >Unicorn Skills That will be required – (Some how through magic)
bshimmin 12y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again!
- Daviey 12y ago
  Ah, but this is a question i am pleased to say 'No' to. x
- Maakuth 12y ago
  I for one needed to Google it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines): Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
  - 8draco8 12y ago
    Simply add "why" or "how" on the beginning of sentence i.e. Why you want to be PHP developer? In marketing they are calling them "open questions", the question to which you have to answer with more than just yes or no
- KhalPanda 12y ago
  It strikes me as more of a rhetorical question/could have just as easily been ended with an ellipsis. But yeah... ha-ha. :)
alexbilbie 12y ago
This list fails to mention http://www.phptherightway.com/ http://www.phptherightway.com/
dutchbrit 12y ago
I wouldn't recommend Zend (I find it rather resource heavy) - but rather Laravel or Symphony, CodeIgniter is also nice and extremely easy to learn - probably the lowest entry level that I can think of, but 2.0 is taking it's sweet time to come along so that's a huge downside, plus, Ellislab wants to sell the project... Regarding CMS work, I have personally found that Magento is one of the best things to specialise in. Ecommerce is a huge market.
- babuskov 12y ago
  I agree. Learn CodeIgniter first because it is easy. Once you create a couple of projects with CI, switch to Laravel (or Yii framework). CI is really good to get a grasp on MVC way of thinking, and learning Laravel later will make you appreciate all the features is has (and CI is missing).
- JonoBB 12y ago
  No, don't even think of learning CodeIgniter. Besides being pretty much dead (version 3 has been coming out for, what, about 2 years now?), it has terrible architecture. The superglobal singleton is just awful and will kill you slowly.
  - ZoFreX 12y ago
    This. I don't understand why CodeIgniter gets mentioned in the same breath as Zend or Symphony, or any other fully-fledged framework. CI is, to start with, much smaller: it's tiny, the sort of thing you could knock out in a week. It also has deep-rooted architectural issues that are preventing some of the longest standing bugs being fixed (for example, take a look at the router). Lastly it's not anywhere near as modular as it purports to be, and the code and architecture quality is rather poor.
    - dutchbrit 12y ago
      The only reason why I mentioned it is because it's extremely easy - for a beginner, it's not a bad choice because it doesn't overwhelm you. Take baby steps.
EGreg 12y ago
How about http://platform.qbix.com http://platform.qbix.com ? Shameless plug.
- shoq 12y ago
  Chrome 35.0.1916.153 Contribute: Need to define QP/contribute/response/column1 Need to define QP/contribute/response/column2 Features: The "You will just have to try it yourself."-Button is not doing anything. Sign Up Link: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'login' of undefined features:1
n0body 12y ago
no, because i'm a perl developer, and perl is php's big brother
- n0body 12y ago
  haters gonna hate
alkonaut 12y ago
"PHP-elitist" is an oxymoron, right? Like a dumpster-foodie or an instant-coffee aficionado?
- morgante 12y ago
  I submit to you dumpster foodies: http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/28/dtg-dumpster-dining-2014-07-11-bk_37_28.html http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/28/dtg-dumpster-dini...
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    There you go! There's a person (and programming language) for every taste...
- stephenr 12y ago
  Stating that disliking/hating the mess that is wordpress makes someone an elitist is stupid and sounds like an apologist to me. Would you call someone a ruby elitist because they embraced best practices and disliked/hated a project that refuses to embrace best practices and encourages bad practices?
  - rimantas 12y ago
    That comment is also under joomla, which is even worse than WP.
waitingkuo 12y ago
No, as a full stack web developer, I use node.js so that I don't need to switch between js and php frequently.
KhalPanda 12y ago
TIL: Symfony has a high learning curve.
adamors 12y ago
This is a rather low effort post. PHP The Right Way [1] already covers the basics of modern PHP, without turning into a laundry list. Today the most important thing is Composer, not frameworks, especially to those who are just starting out. Learning a full framework is pointless if they just want to see the basics in action. Fabien Potencier's Create your own framework series [2] is really good for this: it shows how much you can do with just a couple of Symfony components and a front controller. [1]: http://www.phptherightway.com/ http://www.phptherightway.com/ [2]: http://fabien.potencier.org/article/53/create-your-own-framework-on-top-of-the-symfony2-components-part-4 http://fabien.potencier.org/article/53/create-your-own-frame...
- krapp 12y ago
  This is certainly also the most important thing for existing PHP developers still hanging on to the "old" way of writing PHP code. Having worked on sites where everything is an undocumented mess of manual multi-level includes with shared globals and half-baked implementations of things which already exist, in a better form, well tested and documented elsewhere, I feel like I need to shout from the rooftops php has a package manager! f_ing use it! and url routers are a thing now! It really is surpising how far you can get with a little effort now in PHP, and how much suffering you can avoid by just letting go (of what, admittedly, makes the language fun for some - it's raw, ugly, stupid simple quick-and-dirty hackability) and embracing structure. And open source code.
ZoFreX 12y ago
If you're going down the Drupal route you're just as likely to need Drupal 6 - one of the challenges in this market is there is a lot of legacy work to be done, so you often have to know two or three versions of the framework. In the "Unicorn skills" section, you're as likely to need cPanel or Plesk as pure Linux skills (although having the latter will make the former much easier). I would also say you'll probably be using SVN and not git. Lastly, add FTP and SSH to the skills you'll need.
- jammycakes 12y ago
  > I would also say you'll probably be using SVN and not git. According to http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/php.do http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/php.do these are the number of PHP jobs asking for Git and Subversion respectively in the UK in the past six months: Git: 2244 jobs Subversion: 1559 jobs So no, you're actually more likely to be asked for Git than SVN.
  - ASneakyFox 12y ago
    Being that both are popular and it's common to see both, you really ought to know both.
shire 12y ago
is it easy to find job in the PHP world? and does it even pay good comparing to other languages like Ruby or Python
- imaginenore 12y ago
  Yes, pretty easy.
chx 12y ago
Drupal: Pros: Low Learning Curve Cons: Oversaturated Job Market I will be the first to admit that Drupal does not have a low learning curve. (And you can blame me for some of that. Or a lot of that if you wish :P) But oversaturated job market?? There has been a shortage of good developers ever since there was such a thing as Drupal-developer-as-a-job, at least a decade.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  Agreed. Any Drupal developer who is having a hard time finding work, come to DC. There are over a dozen shops hiring Drupal devs right now.
coffeecheque 12y ago
Does anyone have any good "tick-offs" that you'd ideally have to meet before you could be classified as a PHP Dev? I had a look at the Zend certification link, and I know most of things on the list. It was surprising, because I wouldn't classify myself as a "dev" or anything even close to it. I learnt (and use) PHP via the "hack and see" method.
imaginenore 12y ago
Drupal absolutely does NOT have a low learning curve. If you want to do anything beyond a basic configuration blog-style site, good luck finding developers who know how to deal with Drupal's internals, especially in the last version.
- mreiland 12y ago
  I was wondering at that too, but I don't have experience with some of the other frameworks so I thought perhaps it was just all relative :) I love Drupal, despite some of the flack it gets, I think on the whole it does what it does really well. But easy to get into "it aint".
- wiseleo 12y ago
  Not to mention how there is no backward compatibility. That's what made me abandon that platform.
leorocky 12y ago
A big suggestion missing here is a CS degree. I like Steve Yegge's take on it[1]: > The best tip is: go get a computer science degree. The more computer science you have, the better. You don't have to have a CS degree, but it helps. It doesn't have to be an advanced degree, but that helps too. My own take on it is that most programming languages are like cars and the skill of driving computer science: if you can drive one car, you can learn to drive the other and with programming if you can program in one language you can probably program in the other. Knowing the fundamentals about computers, how information is represented as bits, how they store and process information, how they communicate over networks, how you can use them to solve problems like sorting, cache invalidation, etc is really important stuff that is orthogonal to learning a programming language. Personally if I am using programming language X at my job, and you have 0 experience with it, but are a good programmer, I may not give a shit and hire you anyways. [1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.de/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.de/2008/03/get-that-job-at-googl...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
neurobro 12y ago
Congrats to the author on breaking the stupidly absurd font-size world record!
MrSelection 12y ago
So anyone in here can give me a opinion, how i can improve myself as a worthy developer.. I am 22 years old fresh graduate and a ruby developer with currently 1 year experience, before i have learn node.js(express), php(cms, news site), db(sql,nosql)... but i got a feel(*is it true?) that america, europe is getting a worthed salary as a programmer they are valued rather than here in my country i got around $6000/year with living cost $3600/year this is really a standart in my country. its really hurt me, so as a fellow programmer here can you guys give me a suggestion to improve my living?how bout emigrate?
- juergen 12y ago
  where do you live currently?
  - MrSelection 12y ago
    Well i am in indonesia..
    - toni 12y ago
      I would suggest you to find a job in Singapore or even Malaysia. Browse http://startupjobs.asia/ http://startupjobs.asia/ and try to apply for jobs in countries around you. After you have 3 to 5 years experience, try to emigrate to United States, Canada, News Zealand or a couple of good European countries. Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden off the top of my head. In the mean time, try to learn French or Spanish beside improving your English. It will give you much better advantages when you speak different languages.
      - MrSelection 12y ago
        that is what i aim for, unfortunetly some prefer local people so they didnot need to mess with working permit or anything, for now i am looking for a post-graduate 1year study chance and give me 2-3years stay in that country did you know any of the country like that?, Thanks for the suggestion :)
rabino 12y ago
Also, this: https://github.com/ziadoz/awesome-php https://github.com/ziadoz/awesome-php
snowwrestler 12y ago
Drupal 8 incorporates quite a bit of Symfony, so learning Symfony starting now will probably open some Drupal doors in a year or two when 8 is stable and being heavily used.
shire 12y ago
What's the best of learning a CMS or Framework? or which one should a beginner start with and how can I go about the first steps?

38 points by JeremyMorgan 12y ago

Recommend the Flight (http://flightphp.com/learn http://flightphp.com/learn) framework for creating RESTful APIs in PHP. It is lightweight, flexible, and does routing nicely.

darthdeus 12y ago

Why would I want to be a PHP developer? :O

hackerboos 12y ago
Because it still pays and if you are good at it - pays well.
dirtyphpdev 12y ago
Because finding a job is incredibly easy. Because it pays well if you know your stuff. Because you don't have to work with people who will judge you based on something as in-significant as what programming language you decide to use.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

JeremyMorgan 12y ago

One of my favorite parts: >Unicorn Skills That will be required – (Some how through magic)

bshimmin 12y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again!

Daviey 12y ago
Ah, but this is a question i am pleased to say 'No' to. x
Maakuth 12y ago
I for one needed to Google it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines): Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
- 8draco8 12y ago
  Simply add "why" or "how" on the beginning of sentence i.e. Why you want to be PHP developer? In marketing they are calling them "open questions", the question to which you have to answer with more than just yes or no
KhalPanda 12y ago
It strikes me as more of a rhetorical question/could have just as easily been ended with an ellipsis. But yeah... ha-ha. :)

alexbilbie 12y ago

This list fails to mention http://www.phptherightway.com/ http://www.phptherightway.com/

dutchbrit 12y ago

I wouldn't recommend Zend (I find it rather resource heavy) - but rather Laravel or Symphony, CodeIgniter is also nice and extremely easy to learn - probably the lowest entry level that I can think of, but 2.0 is taking it's sweet time to come along so that's a huge downside, plus, Ellislab wants to sell the project... Regarding CMS work, I have personally found that Magento is one of the best things to specialise in. Ecommerce is a huge market.

babuskov 12y ago
I agree. Learn CodeIgniter first because it is easy. Once you create a couple of projects with CI, switch to Laravel (or Yii framework). CI is really good to get a grasp on MVC way of thinking, and learning Laravel later will make you appreciate all the features is has (and CI is missing).
JonoBB 12y ago
No, don't even think of learning CodeIgniter. Besides being pretty much dead (version 3 has been coming out for, what, about 2 years now?), it has terrible architecture. The superglobal singleton is just awful and will kill you slowly.
- ZoFreX 12y ago
  This. I don't understand why CodeIgniter gets mentioned in the same breath as Zend or Symphony, or any other fully-fledged framework. CI is, to start with, much smaller: it's tiny, the sort of thing you could knock out in a week. It also has deep-rooted architectural issues that are preventing some of the longest standing bugs being fixed (for example, take a look at the router). Lastly it's not anywhere near as modular as it purports to be, and the code and architecture quality is rather poor.
  - dutchbrit 12y ago
    The only reason why I mentioned it is because it's extremely easy - for a beginner, it's not a bad choice because it doesn't overwhelm you. Take baby steps.

EGreg 12y ago

How about http://platform.qbix.com http://platform.qbix.com ? Shameless plug.

shoq 12y ago
Chrome 35.0.1916.153 Contribute: Need to define QP/contribute/response/column1 Need to define QP/contribute/response/column2 Features: The "You will just have to try it yourself."-Button is not doing anything. Sign Up Link: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'login' of undefined features:1

n0body 12y ago

no, because i'm a perl developer, and perl is php's big brother

n0body 12y ago
haters gonna hate

alkonaut 12y ago

"PHP-elitist" is an oxymoron, right? Like a dumpster-foodie or an instant-coffee aficionado?

morgante 12y ago
I submit to you dumpster foodies: http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/28/dtg-dumpster-dining-2014-07-11-bk_37_28.html http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/28/dtg-dumpster-dini...
- alkonaut 12y ago
  There you go! There's a person (and programming language) for every taste...
stephenr 12y ago
Stating that disliking/hating the mess that is wordpress makes someone an elitist is stupid and sounds like an apologist to me. Would you call someone a ruby elitist because they embraced best practices and disliked/hated a project that refuses to embrace best practices and encourages bad practices?
- rimantas 12y ago
  That comment is also under joomla, which is even worse than WP.

waitingkuo 12y ago

No, as a full stack web developer, I use node.js so that I don't need to switch between js and php frequently.

KhalPanda 12y ago

TIL: Symfony has a high learning curve.

adamors 12y ago

This is a rather low effort post. PHP The Right Way [1] already covers the basics of modern PHP, without turning into a laundry list. Today the most important thing is Composer, not frameworks, especially to those who are just starting out. Learning a full framework is pointless if they just want to see the basics in action. Fabien Potencier's Create your own framework series [2] is really good for this: it shows how much you can do with just a couple of Symfony components and a front controller. [1]: http://www.phptherightway.com/ http://www.phptherightway.com/ [2]: http://fabien.potencier.org/article/53/create-your-own-framework-on-top-of-the-symfony2-components-part-4 http://fabien.potencier.org/article/53/create-your-own-frame...

krapp 12y ago
This is certainly also the most important thing for existing PHP developers still hanging on to the "old" way of writing PHP code. Having worked on sites where everything is an undocumented mess of manual multi-level includes with shared globals and half-baked implementations of things which already exist, in a better form, well tested and documented elsewhere, I feel like I need to shout from the rooftops php has a package manager! f_ing use it! and url routers are a thing now! It really is surpising how far you can get with a little effort now in PHP, and how much suffering you can avoid by just letting go (of what, admittedly, makes the language fun for some - it's raw, ugly, stupid simple quick-and-dirty hackability) and embracing structure. And open source code.

ZoFreX 12y ago

If you're going down the Drupal route you're just as likely to need Drupal 6 - one of the challenges in this market is there is a lot of legacy work to be done, so you often have to know two or three versions of the framework. In the "Unicorn skills" section, you're as likely to need cPanel or Plesk as pure Linux skills (although having the latter will make the former much easier). I would also say you'll probably be using SVN and not git. Lastly, add FTP and SSH to the skills you'll need.

jammycakes 12y ago
> I would also say you'll probably be using SVN and not git. According to http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/php.do http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/php.do these are the number of PHP jobs asking for Git and Subversion respectively in the UK in the past six months: Git: 2244 jobs Subversion: 1559 jobs So no, you're actually more likely to be asked for Git than SVN.
- ASneakyFox 12y ago
  Being that both are popular and it's common to see both, you really ought to know both.

shire 12y ago

is it easy to find job in the PHP world? and does it even pay good comparing to other languages like Ruby or Python

imaginenore 12y ago
Yes, pretty easy.

chx 12y ago

Drupal: Pros: Low Learning Curve Cons: Oversaturated Job Market I will be the first to admit that Drupal does not have a low learning curve. (And you can blame me for some of that. Or a lot of that if you wish :P) But oversaturated job market?? There has been a shortage of good developers ever since there was such a thing as Drupal-developer-as-a-job, at least a decade.

snowwrestler 12y ago
Agreed. Any Drupal developer who is having a hard time finding work, come to DC. There are over a dozen shops hiring Drupal devs right now.

coffeecheque 12y ago

Does anyone have any good "tick-offs" that you'd ideally have to meet before you could be classified as a PHP Dev? I had a look at the Zend certification link, and I know most of things on the list. It was surprising, because I wouldn't classify myself as a "dev" or anything even close to it. I learnt (and use) PHP via the "hack and see" method.

imaginenore 12y ago

Drupal absolutely does NOT have a low learning curve. If you want to do anything beyond a basic configuration blog-style site, good luck finding developers who know how to deal with Drupal's internals, especially in the last version.

mreiland 12y ago
I was wondering at that too, but I don't have experience with some of the other frameworks so I thought perhaps it was just all relative :) I love Drupal, despite some of the flack it gets, I think on the whole it does what it does really well. But easy to get into "it aint".
wiseleo 12y ago
Not to mention how there is no backward compatibility. That's what made me abandon that platform.

leorocky 12y ago

A big suggestion missing here is a CS degree. I like Steve Yegge's take on it[1]: > The best tip is: go get a computer science degree. The more computer science you have, the better. You don't have to have a CS degree, but it helps. It doesn't have to be an advanced degree, but that helps too. My own take on it is that most programming languages are like cars and the skill of driving computer science: if you can drive one car, you can learn to drive the other and with programming if you can program in one language you can probably program in the other. Knowing the fundamentals about computers, how information is represented as bits, how they store and process information, how they communicate over networks, how you can use them to solve problems like sorting, cache invalidation, etc is really important stuff that is orthogonal to learning a programming language. Personally if I am using programming language X at my job, and you have 0 experience with it, but are a good programmer, I may not give a shit and hire you anyways. [1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.de/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.de/2008/03/get-that-job-at-googl...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

neurobro 12y ago

Congrats to the author on breaking the stupidly absurd font-size world record!

MrSelection 12y ago

So anyone in here can give me a opinion, how i can improve myself as a worthy developer.. I am 22 years old fresh graduate and a ruby developer with currently 1 year experience, before i have learn node.js(express), php(cms, news site), db(sql,nosql)... but i got a feel(*is it true?) that america, europe is getting a worthed salary as a programmer they are valued rather than here in my country i got around $6000/year with living cost $3600/year this is really a standart in my country. its really hurt me, so as a fellow programmer here can you guys give me a suggestion to improve my living?how bout emigrate?

juergen 12y ago
where do you live currently?
- MrSelection 12y ago
  Well i am in indonesia..
  - toni 12y ago
    I would suggest you to find a job in Singapore or even Malaysia. Browse http://startupjobs.asia/ http://startupjobs.asia/ and try to apply for jobs in countries around you. After you have 3 to 5 years experience, try to emigrate to United States, Canada, News Zealand or a couple of good European countries. Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden off the top of my head. In the mean time, try to learn French or Spanish beside improving your English. It will give you much better advantages when you speak different languages.
    - MrSelection 12y ago
      that is what i aim for, unfortunetly some prefer local people so they didnot need to mess with working permit or anything, for now i am looking for a post-graduate 1year study chance and give me 2-3years stay in that country did you know any of the country like that?, Thanks for the suggestion :)

rabino 12y ago

Also, this: https://github.com/ziadoz/awesome-php https://github.com/ziadoz/awesome-php

snowwrestler 12y ago

Drupal 8 incorporates quite a bit of Symfony, so learning Symfony starting now will probably open some Drupal doors in a year or two when 8 is stable and being heavily used.

shire 12y ago

What's the best of learning a CMS or Framework? or which one should a beginner start with and how can I go about the first steps?