Well I got my Zend Framework in Action book in today. I figure it will help me to understand more fully what I am learning in the Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP. Since this is the first time using Zend Framework, I am trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible – so the more information I have at my disposal to cross reference, the better. This is generally how I have always learned – it was how I taught myself PowerBuilder. I would use five books at one time sometimes – using each to supplement the information I was looking for. One book may not explain something in a easily understood manner, or may leave something out, but by combining the books, it helped in understanding the complex concepts.
I haven’t used PHP OOP (Object Oriented Programming) technology before. I do have a ton of OOP experience, from PowerBuilder to Java, but since PHP 5 was the first version that truly introduced OOP, I haven’t had much of a chance to actually put my knowledge to practice using PHP. One of the issues has been, when you are doing small module type programs, and the client wants something done quickly – it’s a little hard to develop in an OOP style. I try to explain, and in a corporate environment it is a lot easier to do so, that OOP takes much more time on the front end, but saves a ton of time when trying to make modifications later on.
I’m excited to be finally be back into using OOP and “proper” coding practices. The goal with learning Zend is not only to learn this framework and use it – but also to learn proper PHP development. Although Zend Framework in Action didn’t get the best reviews on Amazon it mostly dealt with errors in the code samples. That is downloadable. It did get good reviews in what I was looking for though and that was explaining the fundamentals.