Learning to Program ... in PHP. Course examples.
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-11-01 08:44:17 - Graham EllisMost programming language courses you'll find commercially provided are really "conversion" courses - intended for delegates who have programmed before, but in a different (or very different) language and environment. Our PHP Programming course is like that, and being knowledgeable in very many languages I can really help people who are converting by telling them what the parallels are between the language they know, and the language they're learning, and also what and why the significant differences are.
But there are also delegates who are completely new - or almost completely new - to programming; they benefit hugely from an extra day on the front of the course, and we provide that on our learning to program in PHP course.
On that extra day, I do not show people programs that I have written earlier - I explain things from first principles, and I write programs in front of them showing them how to do it from the ground up. I have them doing something similar on their own systems as we go through the day (it's not just following me - little point in getting them to copy-type!). And at the end of that day, I make sure that the programs I've written are available to them to rerun, to copy, to modify for themselves as they progress with their programming ...
Here, by way of example, is a note of what we covered yesterday and with links to the files that I wrote on the server ...
Method - part 1. some programming basics
[link] Entering and leaving PHP mode, and a first print statement.
[link] First use of variables and calculations
[link] Read from keyboard, calculate, write to screen - a first useful stand alone program
[link] Conditionals (if) and loops (while) - how to make decisions and how to repeat code
[link] Nested blocks - doing rather more by having conditional code within loops
Method - part 2. being a web language, putting it online
[link] The structure of a PHP web page
[link] Calculations and variables within a web page
[link] A form to fill in to provide data to a PHP page
[link] ... and the PHP page that handles the form input
[link] Building the form into the same page as the results so that you can keep rerunning it
[link] Starting to separate out the look and feel from the logic and calculations for easier ongoing maintainance
The next "learning to program in PHP" course starts on 16th January 2011. If you have missed that date, it also starts on 10th April, 19th June, 4th September and 27th November 2011 ... and other dates will be added in due course to the course description page (where you can find how to book too!) which is [here]