Reddit mentions: The best php programming books

For those who need a bit of context, here goes. But please keep this thread general, it's less about me (actually, not at all about me) than it is about Drupal 8!

So, personally, the road so far:

I've just begun to learn Drupal 8 (been waiting on that official release to rely on a feature-freezed core).

I took a simple YouTube "Beginner Tutorial" from OSTraining in 62 small parts that most of you must be aware of. So now I have a rookie understanding of some the basic jargon ─ content type, fields, views, vocabularies and so on ─ and skimmed quickly through very basic features. Not a clue about the file structure, though.

As for books I can't seem to find much:

• the Apress series (Beginning Drupal 8 and Enterprise Drupal 8 Development)
  
  
• and the O'Reilly Programmer's Guide to Drupal.
  
  Re-edited in Nov 2015 so I assume it's Drupal-8 compliant.
  
  I also tried many times to learn on Drupal.org's documentation but I must say I find it hard to digest, let alone put the pieces together. This is not just criticism, in a constructive perspective I'm actually thinking of offering my writing skills for said documentation of the project, once I get a good grasp of what I'd call the "Drupal Core System".
  
  So what are your recommendations? My specific goals are the usual:
  
  
• Extensive understanding of the Drupal Core "main feats" (I feel I currently have a basic understanding of said main features).
  
  
• Should probably include full knowledge/control over CSS/JS-y (Ajax etc.) theming, especially for a wanabee frontend dev like me.
  
  
• Quick but comprehensive overview of everything in Drupal Core. Notably interested in Drupal internal (admin) references, such as the use of <front> to reference a page here, or now to reference today's date, etc.
  
  (I'm thinking a good starter book should cover both the above)
  
  
• Module development. If I understand correctly, this is how one should properly extend Core functionality in order to meet a client's needs. I'm all for OSS so I figure why confine developed stuff to myself when I can share and eventually get help and mentorship on how to do it the right way.
  
  I assume it's mostly done in PHP but are there popular alternatives? I'd really like to work on something else than PHP (mostly because it's easy and not structuring enough for a beginner like me, or so I've heard. I like to learn the hard way, too).
  
  
• Enterprise integration. I'm approaching this self-training from a career change and entreprenarial perspective, so everything that bridges a typical business environment to a Drupal website (intranet, B2B or public) is clearly among my priorities.
  
  Thanks a lot for any answer specific to my needs, but again, I don't wish this thread to be limited to this. :)

In my opinion, both PHP and Ruby can work well for this.

Were you to use PHP, I'd recommend a framework anyway, something along the lines of Laravel (my favorite at the moment).

This effectively gets you the same general framework tools that you would have using Ruby on Rails. I disagree that RoR would be "too much" for this project, it can be heavyweight, but it is that way to help you create your application faster, not because it has an over abundance of features.

The advantage of PHP is that there are a great deal more choices for hosting your project than with Ruby. That said, there are great choices for hosting Ruby as well - just not as many of them.

I would look at the two languages and get a sense of which you'd be more productive in off the bat. My guess is that would be PHP, because although more people are moving to using template engines like Twig, you can still mix PHP into HTML extremely easily In my opinion, that lets you experiment faster than you can with Ruby.

If you chose PHP, I'd recommend the PHP Cookbook http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0596101015 - it's a touch older now, but it contains very helpful learn-by-solving-a-problem recipes that can get you familiar with the basics of the language quickly.

If you're a more academic learner, you might try the more rote Programming PHP http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1449392776/ref=pd_aw_sims_2?pi=SL500_SY115 - which covers a lot more basics, but doesn't solve as many problems. Still, teaches a lot of the core language.

From there I'd work through tutorials on whatever framework you chose so you can get a sense of the patterns that framework uses. In conjunction with building your core knowledge of PHP, you'll start moving pretty quickly.

Eu sunt în general împotriva tutorialelor, cel puţin pe partea de programare. E greu de urmărit şi nu prea are de-a face cu procesul de învăţare ci mai degrabă cu cel de înmagazinare a unor cunoştinţe.
Cel mai bine ar fi la început să începi să citeşti o carte/un articol despre concepte ale programării în general pentru ca apoi să te apuci de sintaxa unui anume limbaj. Plus că îţi trebuie determinare şi multă răbdare.

Odată ce ai prins basicul limbajului, recomandarea mea ar fi să te implici într-un proiect la care poţi contribui cu cod. Codul ăsta va suferi o grămadă de transformări pentru ca la final să nu mai semene deloc cu cel de la început. Ştiu, sună descurajator dar ăsta e procesul natural prin care îţi îmbunătăţeşti skillurile.

Dacă vrei neapărat tutorial video, singura mea recomandarea ar fi PHP with MySQL Essential Training
with Kevin Skoglund
, însă repet: nu mi se pare cea mai fericită metodă de a învăţa programare. Cele mai sfinte lucruri în PHP sunt: cărţile, practica şi http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php!

Dintre cărţi ţi-aş recomanda:

• Programming PHP
  
• Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites
  
• PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice 3rd Edition (Expert's Voice in Open Source)
  
  Astea fiind spuse, îţi urez spor la treabă!

I had the same feeling a few months ago, so I bought Modern PHP. It's done a pretty good job of catching me up.

I would recomment some books and then - practice!
Online classes are also good and you can benefit from the live interaction in them.
These two books have high ratings :


http://www.amazon.com/Programming-PHP-Kevin-Tatroe/dp/1449392776/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1412540290&sr=8-4&keywords=learning+php

and

http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Beginners-Mark-Lassoff/dp/0990402010/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1412540290&sr=8-6&keywords=learning+php

Hi, I learned a lot from reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Module-Development-extensions-efficiently/dp/178216877X

Hope it helps!

I think this one is pretty good,with segments like problem-solution-discussion.Here is a snippet

I was fortunate to receive an advanced copy of the book before it was complete. I have a brief review at http://www.phpstage.com/blog/laravel-up-and-running-review
It offers a different perspective and details on concepts that are often glossed over on laracasts or in the docs. Amazon has it for $33 https://www.amazon.com/Laravel-Running-Framework-Building-Modern/dp/1491936088

• http://www.phptherightway.com/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Developer-Best-Practices-ebook/dp/B00JDMPOSY
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Modern-PHP-Features-Good-Practices/dp/1491905018/
  
  You're welcome.

I recommend Modern PHP by Josh Lockhart

• http://www.phptherightway.com/ (free)
  
• Modern PHP written by Josh Lockhart, the guy who create Slim framework: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-PHP-Features-Good-Practices/dp/1491905018

Modern PHP by josh lockhart (creator of the Slim framework) is a good one to get a kickstart into modern development with PHP.

It's a relatively thin book without any fluff, great read.

There's a second edition of the book that you'd want instead: https://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Development-Cookbook-recipe-based-practical/dp/1788290402/

Apps:

• http://www.sololearn.com/Course/PHP/
  
• https://www.codecademy.com/lrn/php
  
  Book:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Modern-PHP-Features-Good-Practices/dp/1491905018
  
  Official manual:
  
  
• http://php.net/manual/en/index.php

From your description of the book it sounds somewhat similar to the
Drupal 8 Development Cookbook I already have. I might stick to that for the time being.

I have PHP experience dating back to 2001 professionally and before, and even wrote a micro-framework with it over 10 years ago, but it's also been almost that long that I've used it professionally. I've had my eye on this book for a while https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TKVLL26/ and am wondering if anybody can give me any feedback about it.

• Codecademy
  
• Udacity
  
• Treehouse
  
• CoderDojo
  
• SitePoint Community
  
  
  Books
  
  
• Programming PHP
  
• PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice
  
• Learn To Build With PHP: A Crash Course

I went through framework selection a few weeks ago, and settled on learning Yii until I know enough to decide why I would need something else. It's fairly new, but seems to be backed by some smart and hard working people.

Here is my Yii bookmarks folder dump:

Yii resources

Yii tutorials

Yii playground demo application

The Definitive Guide to Yii

Larry Ullman Yii tutorial series

Building a Blog System using Yii

And I'm a sucker for dead trees so I bought this book:

non-affiliate amazon link

amazon affiliate link

ninja edit: formatting