PHP training - refreshed modern course, backed up by years of practical experience
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2014-11-16 08:42:06 - Graham EllisOur PHP course agendas were updated recently, and last week we ran our first series of courses in the new way. Learning to program in PHP started on Monday for delegate who are new to programming (or rusty) and PHP Programing for experienced programmers converting to PHP staretd on Tuesday.
Programming languages themselves change little over the years. A newcomers's first reaction to this statement is to look at the fast-changing technology world and be surprised and a little worried at an apparent lack of progress, but when you stop and think about it, you (as a programmer or a compny) want the work your do / the money you invest this month to have a use years and perhaps a decade ahead. So what does change? It's the use of the language, how it's applied and how new things are added for it to grow with the technology.
Until this autumn, we offered a separate Object Oriented Programming in PHP course, but now the OO approach is gently integrated with the main course. It's not rammed down the throats of people for whom it's an interesting but perhaps impractical tool, but it's there through the course. Please get in touch if you're a non-OO PHP user who wants to learn OO; we can still run the OO day on request!.
Much of the the PHP course - since its inception, years ago - has been about writing excellent code that's robust, reliable, easy to maintain and easy to upgrade / reuse as requirements change. And that's unaltered. We've spoken about Rasmus Lerdorf's 4 layer model (Rasmus is the father of PHP!) and how it's split out the helper routines that are common to many pages, the application specific calculations, and the template that give a look and feel to the site. Having such a structure allows the site to be looked after much more easily, with natural test points provided, an abilitly to update the look of the site without distrubng the maths, and an ability to change application algorithms without messing about with the look and feel. The four layer model has been ahead of its time ... for "template" read "view", for "appliaction calculations read "model", for the code that pulls it together read both "framework" and "controller". And what do you have? A Framework, with Model View and Controller, and sets of helper functions ... and best practise these days is very much to use an "MVC framework". The course has always encouraged appliaction authors to use the 4 layer approach, but we're now presenting it in a Framework / MVC way as well, thus bringing best practise to our delegates in such a way that they understand why it's an excellent way to work, and to help them decide if the way forward for them is to use their own structure, or to use a framework such as Zend or CodeIgniter.
The next "Learning to Program in PHP" course starts on 23rd February 2015, with subsequent courses in May, August and November. If you come back to this page in our archive, take a look [here] for our current public course schedule. If you have a group of 4 or more delegates requiring the same course at the same time, it's going to be cost effective for you to set up a private course instead - we can do that at our Melksham, Wiltshire training centre, elsewhere in the UK, or indeed just about anywhere in the world where it's legal (visa and work permit issues) and safe for us to do so, and where we share a common spoken language for use during the training course.