Which Parts Of Php Not To Learn ?

[UI]

Guys,

After getting putoff from php.net to learn php 7 (because it is not beginner friendly) and raoming around youtube for 1.5mnth to learn php and failing to get proper tutorials there, I returned to php.net. Was reading the CONSTANT chapter and really got pissed-off.
Read this page and tell me if it is a beginner friendly tut or not:

<a href="PHP">http://php.net/manual/en/language.constants.php">PHP: Constants - Manual</a>[<a href="http://php.net/manual/en/language.constants.php" target="_blank" title="New Window">^</a>]

I find contributor's quarreling in the comments of what works and what not. Obviously, one of them is right and the other wrong. Now, question is, why did php.net put the arguments of the incorrect person in front of us getting us newbies to read quarrels of an incorrect programmer going back and forth with the correct programmer ? Result ? Newbies get confused and put-off from php. Php seems like a neverending mess!
Anyway, I have come to the conclusion not to get my tutorial from there. Can use php.net as a reference in the future once more experienced. And so, heading towards tutoprialspoint.com.

This however, just lists the newly added features on php 7 and so no good to me:

<a href="http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php7/">
</a>[<a href="http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php7/" target="_blank" title="New Window">^</a>]

And so, I guess you guys would recommend:

<a href="http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php/">
</a>[<a href="http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php/" target="_blank" title="New Window">^</a>]

But, looking at the chapters in their list, which ones (functions, etc.) are deprecated in php 7 so I shouldn't bother with them ? Do you mind pointing-out the chapters and their links from their tutorial ? You can find their chapters on the leftside of their page:

<a href="PHP">http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php/">PHP Tutorial</a>[<a href="http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php/" target="_blank" title="New Window">^</a>]

And no, phptherightway.com is not for beginners as it assumes you kno php 5 etc. which I don't.

Thank You!

PS - Remember, other newbies would find your contributions here and hopefully give you good rating.

[rubberman]

Do you know any C++ or other object oriented languages such as Java or C#? If so, consider PHP to be C++ for the web: classes, methods, member and global/static variables as well as just-plain-functions. Most people make a hash of PHP, but if they program it like they would C++ then all of a sudden it becomes a lot simpler to deal with.

[diafol]

Sorry UI, but all these requests for PHP7 tutes are getting tiresome. You have many threads going on a similar theme. A number of contributors here have told you that most PHP5 tutes are sufficient for your needs. You are not an advanced programmer, so you will not comes across the changes from 5 to 7 (other than mysql functions). You make the case for beginner tutes, but are not prepared to take advice from seasoned PHP programmers who KEEP TELLING YOU that php5 tutes and php7 tutes for beginners would be identical.

You can expect PHP7 tutes to concentrate on the differences between 5 and 7. Why the f*** would anybody create a php7 tute that already exists for php5 and would be identical?

Signing off exasperated.

[AssertNull]

I find contributor's quarreling in the comments of what works and what not.

As on Daniweb or anywhere else.

Obviously, one of them is right and the other wrong.

Sometimes it is not so cut and dry. If there is an actual BUG, generally it is pointed out and corrected. There, and here, and on Stack Overflow,, you have rankings on posts. Generally you can pay attention to the ones with high positive rankings and ignore negative rankings.

But sometimes there won't be a "right" or "wrong" answer, but perhaps a "Here's another way to do it" answer and people will debate the answer.

Now, question is, why did php.net put the arguments of the incorrect person in front of us getting us newbies to read quarrels of an incorrect programmer going back and forth with the correct programmer ?

There is the "official manual" part, then there is the "User Contributed Notes" part. If you are a confused newbie unable to decide who is right, go with the "official manual" part. There's going to be some good quality control there, though an occasional mistake might get by, as with everything, but it'll generally get caught. php.net is going to spend a lot of effort making sure the official manual is correct and well written.

For the "User Contributed Notes" part, it'll be a lot like Daniweb. People weigh in with their opinions, including people who may not know who the heck they are talking about. Generally the moderators let people have their say, as on Daniweb. As with Daniweb, you can generally quickly figure out is full of hot air and who knows what they are talking about. Again, look at the post scores. The negative posts are greyed out, so you generally ignore them.

Result ? Newbies get confused and put-off from php. Php seems like a neverending mess!

No more than any other language with an official manual and the opportunity for people to weigh in as they see fit. The key is understanding that and understanding that a "manual" and a "tutorial" are different and php.net appears to be a manual. Sure, you can use it as a tutorial too, but it shouldn't be your go-to tutorial. Just ignore the "User-Contributed Notes" if they hinder rather than help, or rather, understand clearly that they are NOT part of the "official manual" and never were intended to be. Thus php.net will not always make an official verdict as to who is right and who is wrong, just as the mods here do not.

[UI]

Thank you AssertNull!

You certainly nulled my temper flare reading Diafol's bad language!

As for Diafol! Here goes ...

I said many times before, I was having problem finding a proper php tutorial site that taught php 7 as most tut sites are unupdated and teaching php 3 or 5 and php.net was not suitable as it is a reference site for intermediate/adv people who already know php. When folks started suggesting I learn php 7 from tutorialspoint.com and phptherightway.com I pointed-out those sites assume I know previous versions of php and so not suitable for newbies, some either suggested I learn from php.net (thus I had to repeat my refusal) and some agreed not many sites they're aware teach php 7 (those that do only teach what is new in php 7 and do not teach the whole lang) and I should look into those sites teaching php 5. I then had to repeat my refusal to learn php 5 from php 5 tut sites because I do not want to learn deprecated stuffs dropped from php 7 and I do not want to learn php 5 syntax and then learn php 7 syntax and get confused. I assumed php 7 syntax was more refined and different than previous versions but most recently programmers assured me the syntax is still the same and I should start learning to walk from php 5 tut sites since they start from the beginning ("Hello World!") and I can then migrate to php 7 tut site and learn what is different (new features).
After a lot of beating round the bush and starting to believe them that syntax on both versions are same I headed to php.net lastnight and found it totally a put-off. I then took everyone's advice and headed towards tutorialspoint.com and ignored the php 7 what is new in php 7 tut and glanced over to the php 5 tut instead. But to my dismay found it has no chapter on Data Types the very fundamental chapter and so I felt down again and decided to try another site. But before I try another, I thought best I gather the list of deprecated features that didn't find their way onto php 7 as that way I won't waste time learning old deprecated stuffs. Now, even though php 7 tut sites (that only teach what is new in php 7 - sites like tutorialpoint.com's php 7 tut and phptherightway.com) list the modern new functions but do they list each and every deprecated stuffs ? I do not think so. And so I'd accidently start learning old stuffs. Need to avoid this. Hence, the reason for opening this thread. Smart thing to do, you no should agree. Anyway, I've jogged my memory by a programmer now that I was already given a link to find deprecated stuffs lit on php.net and so I can stick to that.
Btw, Diafol (and anybody else who feels the ame way as he), you can't say I did not do enough to just go and learn php rather than waste time talking about it (like some think). Even now, I have sat infront of my computer to learn as much as I can from tutorialspoint.com if I can't find any better. I just thought best check the forum for you guys' inputs before embarking on my learning venture. That way, I can have oldbie programmers advice roaming in my head while I search for the perfect or near perfect tut sites.
Anyone are welcome to suggest a site. Remember, all tut sites, books, vids are not same in quality and some teach bad practice and so I must be very careful where I step.
I repeat: As for now, heading towards tuttorialspoint.com unless you guys know of a better site than it and phptherightway.com.

As for me using sql queries with variables (as few pointed-out), the only other way to avoid that is do PREPARED STATEMENT stuffs (if I understood correctly) but to do that I need to learn PDO from tut others suggested. I checked out the tut few nghts ago but the subject is not for beginners.

http://php.net/manual/en/pdo.prepared-statements.php

Therefore, have not changed my code to replace using sql queries with variables as I do not know how to substitute it with PDO yet. Hence, went back to learning the basics lastnight. Once that is out of the way, I can then look into PDO and PREPARED STATEMENTS. As for now, my codes in that subject would be untouched and so ignore that aspect of my code and look into other parts that relate to the ubject of the thread opened.

Cheers.

[diafol]

@UI

I apologise if an f with a few asterisks offends you, but I am simply exasperated by some 8 threads or so you've littered over the forum on the same theme. It was if you didn't like the responses you got, so you re-posted the threads with a slightly different twist. You could be months, if not years away from creating production code. Learning the basics is the same for 5 and 7. If you really want to learn PHP "properly", well there are as many ways to do that as there are programmers. There is no PERFECT way. Some insist on OOP (as in C++) for everything, some will insist on functional, some on procedural and all manner of stuff in between.
You learn as you go on. There is no "I will learn this perfect PHP7 stuff" - wait until a revision comes around or a security scare, and it will be do it some other way.

If you are scared to do something because there may be a better way, don't even consider programming since you can guarantee that your 100 line code will be whittled down to 50 and execute twice as quickly by somebody else. Those 50 lines would be cut down further by somebody else, etc etc. You need to get ito the code, start playing about and learn from your mistakes. Learning actively from your mistakes is hell of a lot more effective than trying to learn passively from a tutorial. Anyhow, good luck with it.

[cereal]

@UI

Hi!

in addition to previous comments, if you are learning PHP for work, sooner or later you will handle legacy code, you will be asked to add functionalities, not always to port it. You cannot always choose the version to work with. For example, something simple like:

$i = 1024**2*10;

returns a syntax error if you use PHP <= 5.5 and works fine when using the latest versions. To avoid issues in such case, you would write:

$i = 1024*1024*10;

Or see how list() changed the behaviour between PHP 5 and 7 when using array indices, that's just insane (it was from the beginning). IMHO, you need to know these things too, to become more efficient.

[UI]

Ok, I LIKED Diafol's post this time and rProffitts.
I understand Diafol saying just to get don to programming by learning from as many places as possible and there is no one way of doing things (perfect way) and different tuts would teach differently.
To tell you the truth, I did all that. Went through tizag.org in sep to dec 2015 and then foundout php 7 out and so waited for php 7 tut to comeout and fogot all I learnt on php 5.
Now, after learning php 5 and 7 syntax still same and I can continue learning from php 5 tut sites, I'm heading toward tutorialspoint.com again now. It is just they do not have TYPES chapter. I wonder wha else they've missed-out. Nevermmind. I will cross reference their chapters against php.net manual reference.
As for phptherightway.com, they start their tut from OPERATOR instead of DATA TYPES (Strings, etc.). Not suitable for a complete beginner.

As for me not fixing my codes as suggested when it comes to it having variables in queries, I say I can't fix that unless I learn pdo and prepared statements.
(I just foundout mysqli prepared stataements exist then might aswell learn that first since I kno a little mysqli. Pdo I know nothign atall and it is not for beginners but intermediate like you).

Here, I was at chapter 4 only out of 50 or so:

PHP: PHP Manual - Manual

But that didn't stop me from experimenting (getting codes from youtube tuts and modifying them to my needs and then asking for help here when I faced errors) to build my own script that inputs & outputs data to/from mysql.

As for not fixing the part where each user gets a tbl under their name, I already mentioned somewhere that, I have good reason for that and when I finish the script and show it then everyone would understand.
Apart from all this, I can't see what else I've been told to fix which I have not yet. Can you think of any ?
From time to time, I put a $ on mysqliquery function like so $mysqli or missed a closing bracket or a semi colon and faced errors and asked for help and got pointed-out my mistakes. They've been fixed and the errors gone.**

As for my codes having outdated html <center>, since it is working on my browser then I'm leaving it for now as it is to concentrate more on the php errors. Once the php stuffs are fixed, then I can substitute to html 5 and css (work on the web design). As for now, best you ignore the html. I'm concentrating right now on the programming part over the design.
Fixing the issue where html form code is above the php processor code.