Learning PHP

If you planning to choose web development as a career option, you’ve probably been wondering what kind of language you should learn. Learning how to use HTML code is good for a start, but in order to carry out complex functions you will need to learn an advanced programming language.

In your search for the right language you would have come across the acronym PHP; this stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP is a free and open source programming language. This makes it the ideal choice for beginners as they incur no cost in learning the language. It is no wonder then, that PHP is the most popular web development language in the world today.

One of the reasons for its popularity is that it is a powerful language which is easy to learn. By purchasing a good book on PHP and augmenting it with some web resources any beginner can be well on their way to becoming a PHP expert. Perhaps the best way to set about it would be to set some goals to achieve and some problems to solve; then go about writing the code after which, look for sample code on the web that does the same thing. By comparing the two codes you will discover better ways to optimize your code and also learn better programming techniques.

PHP is capable of cross platform compatibility and is therefore portable. This allows you to write code which will work on any type of operating system. As you learn more about PHP, you will also discover that it is extremely good at manipulating relational databases. This is something that you will find useful as your skills and requirements grow.

From this brief description you can see that PHP is a versatile and powerful language. Considering that it was also “made for the web”, it is an ideal choice for beginners to sink their teeth into in learning advanced web skills.