You've chosen an interesting time to pick up web development! /u/GruntildaJr left an excellent guide on learning front end development, but as a back-end developer I wanted to chime in for the other half.

Learning back-end development without an internet connection will be a little more difficult, but certainly not impossible nor any more effort than a few hours of getting things configured. Nearly any web server can be hosted on your personal machine without an internet connection. Apache is my personal choice and likely one of the easiest to setup on Windows, but Nginx is a lot of fun and there's plenty of options.

Here is a fairly straight forward tutorial for setting up a local development environment on Windows. Although the writer suggests using Zend Eclipse as an editor and I would have to point you towards PHPStorm or Atom with a linter and autocomplete plugin. That said, Eclipse will serve you fine. After completing the tutorial you will have PHP, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, and Apache set up and running. While not especially fancy, these are the basic tools to start learning the ins and outs of back-end development.

As for learning materials, I love Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript and PHP The Right Way. If you want something very beginner friendly and a bit easier to read, PHP Pandas is a good option.

Of the three, PHP The Right Way will be the biggest challenge. It moves quickly and takes you the furtherest, if you haven't programmed before I wouldn't recommend starting with it but I would recommend going through it after you've gotten some experience under your belt. The O'Reilly book is good for walking through a stack of technologies and outlining how they interact to make a full website, while PHP Pandas is a more thorough dive into the language itself (and it's a lot less painful to slog through if you don't like textbooks). All three are excellent and stand well on their own. If you can only select a single one though, I'd highly recommend the O'Reilly book.

A good companion for any more formal book is the Learn X In Y Minutes PHP Page. It's a little one page cheat sheet to reference when you forget something like the syntax for a switch statement or why you should use double instead of single quotes. There's also a bunch of other languages including JavaScript and I've found them all incredibly helpful. Zeal, as mentioned by GruntildaJr is also a great asset, and it contains the pages for PHP.

There are back-end languages other than PHP along with plenty of frameworks and libraries to explore and learn. I don't want to make it sound as if PHP is your only choice, or the best choice for a back-end language. I do think that it is one of the best choices for a back-end language when you take the learning offline, though. There is a wealth of offline literature, I only linked a few books but the market is simply saturated with PHP texts. The language also stands easily on its own, and for the most part the texts treat it as such. You won't constantly be needing to "pip install" or "npm install" like you do with Python and Node.js.

I hope all of that was of some help, it can be a hump to get over that initial setup but afterwards the learning is much more rewarding. Happy developing and godspeed!

Here's a good list I keep posting because people often ask the same question - not like it's a bad thing.

In any case follow the below, but I really suggest for total newbies to first go through the course Codecademy offers. It won't teach you much in how to do things but the syntax education is good. Follow their HTML and CSS courses and when you're done, create a site using just HTML and CSS. Once done, try to emulate a few of your favorite sites using just these two languages.

Once done you should check out the free 30 day Tutsplus courses on HTML/CSS and jQuery. At some point you will want to go back to Codecademy and take their JS course. Syntax and method of doing or starting certain things is important. It's incredibly easy to pickup the actual methods of doing things once your head understands the syntax used.

Any form of education that follows a hierarchical format makes for easy learning.
__


Codecademy isn't bad. It won't teach you much in the way of doing things but it does teach you the way to type out code, the general process and stuff. I can't speak for myself because I work as a professional developer and have been tinkering with code for 10 years now, but I did give the first lesson to one of my brothers. He's not great with computers or the Internet, but he was able to follow the first two sections of the basic HTML/CSS course and able to make his own site albeit very basic in nature nearly a month later (3 week gap following him doing the lessons). He was able to do a rough basic site of his Facebook profile, and he nailed it. It should open doors for you in terms of having the basic knowledge of how to do things. It'll allow you to read more advanced stuff and pick it up much faster than if you hadn't.

Below is a list I sent to someone on here a while back.

>
>http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1eqaqo/best_books_or_online_resources_for_comprehensive/ca2w2dn?context=3



>PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition)
>
>Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
>
>Read the second book, do all the examples, then go back to the first book. Pay a lot of attention toward array manipulation. When you're comfortable with that, get into OOP. Once you do and OOP clicks for you, you'll be able to go to town on anything. I've heard a lot of good about Jefferey Way's video lesson courses over at TutsPlus. I've never used them nor do I need to, but I've never heard a single bad thing about their video courses. Their Javascript and Jquery is a great starting point. This is great stuff too if you're willing to put in the time.
>
>Professional JavaScript for Web Developers
>
>JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages
>
>Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3
>
>The Node Beginner Book
> Professional Node.js: Building Javascript Based Scalable Software
>
>Paid online "schooling":
>
>http://teamtreehouse.com/
>
>http://www.codeschool.com/
>
>Bonus:
>
>http://hackdesign.org/
>
>
>I've got a shit ton (Excuse my French) of books in print and E-Format that I could recommend, but it would span a couple pages. Anything is easy to learn so as long is it's served in a hierarchical format that makes it easy to absorb the information. A year ago I started to learn Ruby and using ROR as a framework. I can say it's been quite fun and I feel confident that I could write a fully complete web app using it. I started node.JS a few months ago, but it's been on break due to being sick and some unexpected events.
>
>My knowledge is extensive only because I wanted it to be. I'm not gifted by any means nor am I special. Not by a longshot. Some people are gifted when it comes to dev and design, most are not. Most only know one or the other. I forced myself to learn and be good at both. I'm 23, I started when I was about 12. I'm only breathing more comfortably now. I know a load of people on here and other sites who make me look like complete shit.
>
>
>Also for what it's worth, sign up to StackOverflow. It's the bible and holy grail rolled up into one site. It's amazing.
>
>Also;
>
>Hattip to /u/ndobie
>
>> CodeAcademy
> Team Treehouse
> CodeSchool. This is more programming but still very useful & has free stuff.
> Tuts+
> Google. Probably the best way to find out how to do something specific.
> This subreddit. If you have any questions about how to do something, like parallax scrolling, try searching for it, then ask, make sure to include an example of what you want if you don't know what it is called.

I'm going to assume you're a complete newbie. I'm only a few steps ahead of you, really, but I can share some advice. I've always felt like 75% of the battle is figuring out what to learn when it comes to scripting or computer languages in general. And a lot of time, even cutting edge, comprehensive sources are outdated within a few years and, if you follow their advice, you may expose yourself to security concerns. Like leapyquacky said, the question is a bit vague, but I'm going to assume you want employees to access a page with user-specific credentials so no employee can impersonate another, etc:

1. PDOs/prepared statements are the best way to connect to the DB. The PDO documentation will help immensely. It should be easy enough if you've ever done any OOP. The reason for this -- and this is really paramount, especially if it's on the internet -- is the risk of SQL injections.
   
   
2. To maintain any semblance of security, you'd need to hash your users' passwords, and likely with something a little more secure than MD5. There's an excellent article on Openwall about this. You'd need a hash, a salt, and minimum length/complexity requirements for your passwords. This is just not good practice, it's essential if you store anything sensitive.
   
   
3. You'd be using sessions to maintain state across your pages. The best videos I can think of on sessions are behind a paywall, but the documentation should get you pretty far. phpacedemy on YouTube has a few videos on sessions, if I recall. Just remember, if you're using YouTube to learn about sessions, a lot of those videos are dated and the security practices won't be ideal. If you see them connecting to their DB using mysql_connect, this is the case. Listen to the session advice, but don't use that function unless you care to get pretty technical about escaping user input.
   
   
4. You're going to need levels of access on the page -- admin, general, etc., so you can protect information and actions that need to be secure. You'd probably also want a running log of all the changes your users made to the database.
   
   
5. None of this stuff will make much sense unless you're familiar with PHP. The documentation is great, but I recommend reading a good book on it, bearing in mind that whatever you read could be out of date. (Hint: Argh, matey, thar be a website that may get yeh the book yeh want withou' yer payin'.)
   
   It's not hard but it requires a scattershot of understanding that may take a little while to really get. I know it did for me, anyway. Once you have that going on, you'll probably have more specific questions. Lookin' forward to it.
   

aah well if you primarily like webpage designing and management and sorts then you can start with HTML/CSS and move up to php,sql and javascript. I've seen many job openings for people efficient with the above.
Now if you want to go to the path of making apps and program then you can choose C++/Java/Python+swift(or swift alone if iOS developer is your focal point) which is very lucrative.
Personally I hated C++ and I am learning Java. I use the course book "Intro to Java Programming" by Daniel Liang which comes with a website that lets you preview examples which really helps. I've heard that python codes are easier to begin with but Java has the market. This article might help you decide what to go with. Also I have found learning html/css is very useful as many blogs and such allows you executive control over design with html/css. I am learning php and sql with the help of this book and this one which is really top notch. They require you to have prior knowledge on HTML and CSS so I'd recommend you to use codecademy to kickstart it all. They have HTML/CSS, JavaScript, python among others. I am really fond of their beautiful UI and learning process which helps a lot. At the end of the course they have where you have to build a project to complete the course which is really cool and exciting imo.
Good luck in your journey and get the 8.1, it's not bad as people make it out to be, it's kind of like OS X but windows people adore the start functionality and reporters who use mac join on the bandwagon. Also windows 7 requires cost to upgrade to 8.1 and possibly to 10 whereas 10 will most probably be free for 8.1 users. I adore the multi tasking functionality on the 8.1 and prefer it to 7.

I learnt from these 2 books
Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1118907442/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Y1MQCbH3QGBW6
I highly recommend them, they aren’t really tutorials on how to code but goes into excellent detail on everything you need to know. They do include code examples and website concepts such as design, how to structure, ease of use etc...

If you want to progress from this, you can start looking at databases and collecting user data etc... the PHP practice is a bit outdated but it is a very good tutorial book to get started
PHP & MySQL In Easy Steps
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1840785373/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_C7MQCb9JHJP5G

I’m also hoping you’ve came across w3 schools at some point but just incase you might want to have a look at this website as well, it’s great for information all website related
https://www.w3schools.com

This was my path and I’ve done 2 courses of web design at uni and there isn’t much more they were able to teach me that I hadn’t already learnt from those books. Obviously a bit more advanced stuff but tutorials and resources are always available online for that.

If you have anymore questions don’t be afraid to ask! Like I said I’m still a student who self taught all this and it’s not my job but I hope it will be in the future for me too, so hopefully a professional might be able to offer you better advice :)

If you like web development stuff, you could try your hand at something like PHP. Try building a simple login form.

If you're in a position to purchase a book, I would highly recommend this book. It's nice and simple and is really easy to follow. You should be able to grasp the basic concepts of PHP pretty easily. Plus, if you're already looking at HTML5 then you should have a logical thinking flair so you've already got a foot in the door.

Seeing as you're chatting to me on this reddit bot centered AMA, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and assume you could be interested in coding simple bots. If so, you could try looking at Python - that's another coding language and it reads quite well. Some people say it's like reading English (it's not, but what they mean is it's easy to follow and pretty much forces good code etiquette).

I can give you some examples of Python scripts if you'd like, so you can see what it could be like to start learning it.

Another good tip for you is to download some ready built PHP scripts. You can find them for free via Google, or head to www.codecanyon.com and grab a pretty much ready built site for a small amount of money. You'll be able to see the source code behind the sites and hopefully be able to read through the code to see how things work. You may need to start a development server, but you could create one locally on your own machine at low to zero cost.

As far as training goes I am a trainee myself so I don't know how much help I can provide. Since you seem pretty new to all this (with the most positive meaning) here are some points I can give you and I hope others will correct me where I am wrong.

• Learn the basics of each language. You need HTML, CSS3 and Javascript. Those cover the front end. Especially for Javascript I hear good words for this book http://eloquentjavascript.net/. That codewars site you using will help you cement the basics of the language but don't spend very long time in that.
  
  
• For back end you seem to have chosen PHP. I would complement with some knowledge of SQL. Especially data relationships, database normalization, joins etc.
  
  
• After you have the basics down then look for frameworks. Frameworks are essentially blueprints of web applications. The important decisions are made for you and you must fill your business logic. They will reduce a lot of work. These are what I know to be popular. Since I don't use them there might be other options
  
  
  
  
• HTML + CSS -> Foundation, Bootstrap
  
• Javascript -> JQuery, Angualar, React and an ocean of others. For now I think JQuery will suffice
  
• PHP -> https://laravel.com/ or maybe a CMS like drupal. I don't know which would be best. Lavarel would require more code from you but the result will be closer to your needs. Drupal is more point and clicky, maybe will get you there faster but it is a more out of the box solution. Both will abstract a lot of SQL for you.
  
  
• Validation: You can do it in both Javascript and PHP. In Javascript validation will enhance your users experience while in the PHP it is essential for your site's security and your data integrity. In back end I would say validation is mandatory while in front end you can skip it for now, according to your needs.
  
  Most important: Go to github.com and seek for projects doing what you want to do preferably with the frameworks you choose. Then read their code and try to understand what they do.
  
  PS: If you haven't done any serious reading so far I would recommend this book. https://www.amazon.com/Learning-PHP-MySQL-JavaScript-Javascript/dp/1491918667
  It is a bit outdated but it is packed with good advice to get you started. The rest you can learn by googling.

PHP is a great language to start out with. It's super easy to learn because it's very forgiving, which means it's easy to write "bad" code.

Writing bad code is okay for a while, but when you learn what "good" code is, you'll be frustrated at yourself.

I'd really recommend learning at The Odin Project

It doesn't teach you PHP, but it is a guided course that kinda holds your hand and tells you where to go.

If you're genuinely interested in PHP, I'd recommend Head First PHP & MySql

The Head First books do an insanely good job of teaching. They're among the best in my opinion, and Head First Design Patterns is kind of an industry standard.

That should teach you the basics. Enough to get started and enough to be dangerous.

After that, PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice is a really good book to go from "okay" to "pretty great".

Good luck!

Well it all depends on what language will you be using for Backend.

Assuming you use PHP i can recommend you a book i owe and it's quite good "Learning Php, MySQL & JavaScript: With Jquery, CSS & Html5" covers frontend basic that you can skip, but the main reason i recommend you this one is because you learn PHP which is a very famous language in all internet backen, covers javascript which you will need for sure, you learn Database development another needing in backend and the final project its a social website.

Now assuming you want to go on with JS to go full in just one language then a must is this udemy course: The Complete Node.js Developer Course (3rd Edition). On books side there are tons of options, so i will leave this collection of some of the best JS & NodeJS books:

1. Best JavaScript Books (2019)
   
2. Top 20 Node.JS books that you should read in 2018
   
   These are the ones i can recommend you, if you tell me which language you will be using i could help you a little bit more on forming a learning path(I love learning paths) to keep focused on what to study and when. Don't get discouraged by imposer syndrome, whenever you get to think about it get to code and the greatest advice i can give you is "Always read a book while coding" don't just read a book, code what you see and even do some projects related to the topic you are looking don't focus only in the book, "practice makes perfection". Keep it going bro!

You absolutely will need R and/or SAS to do any work beyond basic statistics. You'll have to know how to do data munging and how to reshape your data to get it in the right form. It's 2018. You have to know how to clean your own data. Additionally, you'll be asked to repeat complicated analyses, or questions like "How did you calculate this number in this analysis from six months ago?" A point-and-click interface doesn't give you a record that makes it easy to do these things. In a programming language, you can rerun complex procedures in the press of a button. Programming can be a little scary at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll wonder how you lived without it.

Fear not though! There are a ton of fantastic resources to learn how to code. If you've never programmed before, my recommendation would be to go through the Codecademy intro Python tutorial. Even if you never want to use Python after this, you'll learn about variables, conditions, loops, data types, functions, and language-specific features. These are ideas that exist in every programming language (well SAS has macros, not functions, but you get my point.)

I also recommend using R for all of your statistics homework, even if the professor doesn't require it. That's how I learned R. It'll put you in a position where you have to learn how the language works and where the functions you want to use are. Once you have the basics of R down, check out R for Data Science. It's a very modern book on R that encourages you to use user-friendly packages to do data analysis. As for SAS, it's a terrible language that's losing market share to R and is popular because it's popular. It can help to know the basics, but it's a language I leave off my resume and LinkedIn because I never want to touch it again.

I'd also recommend learning SQL at some point. Most datasets will be in databases you'll have to query for the data you want. My favorite book for this is SQL in 10 Minutes, which is a book of 10-minute lessons, where each one is on a SQL concept. Don't worry about the specific SQL dialect since they're virtually all the same. Once you're comfortable with basic queries and joins you're in good shape.

SQL Queries for Mere Mortals is an excellent beginner's read front to back. The same guy wrote a database design book, which I did not find as helpful.

As for software, it depends on what database system you end up using. I use SQL Server and a little MySQL, but I know PostgreSQL, SQLite, and many others are popular.

If you're learning indipendantly, I'd start with MySQL , as it is free (open source) and you will be able to learn the basics of SQL in any SQL database. It also has a good free GUI development tool, MySQL Workbench, and a robust online community.

Like any programming language, the best way to learn is to build something with it. So start thinking of something you want to build, so you'll have something to do once you know enough to play around.

Only about half of the programming industry has a degree directly related to IT or programming. Most have college degrees in something, but in the end the most valuable thing to someone hiring in IT is skills. Once you have the skills, you just need to get noticed.

I would recommend you learn Linux administration and web development. (Or you could learn Windows too - I don't know Windows well so I can't comment on it. Linux and Mac OS X are somewhat more popular in the programming world, but if you're looking to get into IT, not programming, then Windows administration might be more common.)

A good book to learn Linux is "The Linux Command Line".

https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Command-Line-Complete-Introduction/dp/1593273894/

For learning web development, you could read "
Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript: With jQuery, CSS & HTML5"

https://www.amazon.com/Learning-PHP-MySQL-JavaScript-jQuery/dp/1491978910/

Codecademy would also really help you in here:

https://www.codecademy.com/

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me and I'll do my best to respond.

Hi guys,
I see quite a few people on here asking about learning SQL and I figured I may be able to offer a resource. I wrote a book on SQL Server fundamentals and published it back in May of 2018 and it’s free today.

It goes over database use, database objects, syntax for creating and altering data and objects, administration tasks and user/security permissions, plus more. It also has exercises and screenshots to make it easier for the reader and better retain what they learn.

I’ve had quite a few people tell me that it actually helped them in their day job and that’s really awesome to hear. If you end up picking it up please let me know and leave a review if you can! I would enjoy hearing how it helped you.

The free promo expires today at 11:59 pm PDT but you can always search for “Learn SQL Jacob” in the Amazon site for your country to find it and it should be free.

Feel free to take a look and thanks for reading :)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D5S2W4Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_fytADb7XXDQ1V

>With that said, are there any languages that you think would be particularly good for me to know?

SQL, and then Python if you're interested in working with databases. HTML and CSS might also be good if you're interested in working in an academic or public library in the future.

>Which language(s) would be most helpful to learn first?

Whichever really, HTML was easier for me to understand at first since I wanted to see how websites worked before trying to do my own thing.

>Lastly, are there any specific coding resources you would recommend?

Two great websites are General Assembly or codeacademy which have individual lessons and show you the code right alongside the instructions.

W3schools has a bunch of tutorials on the basics.

For SQL, you can't go wrong with Ben Forta's Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes

Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions!

My company is working on an introductory PHP book, but I'm not sure when it'll be out (my hope is soon). It will be up to date, at least.

Until then, the most solid introductory one I've found is Luke Welling and Laura Thomson's book. It, too, is a bit long in the tooth now, but it's pretty solid. They are working on a new edition, apparently, which I'll recommend until my wallet says to trash it in favor of ours. ;)

For free resources, as always, I'll plug PHP the Right Way which really does cover up-to-date practices for developing with PHP and also covers lots of PHP 5.4 and 5.5 stuff.

My blog is advertised on my stack overflow account and github, all three are circular and refer to each other. I've kept my reddit account separate on purpose for identifiable reasons.

I'm still toying with the idea of posting occasional blog posts or creating a reddit account to link to my other social medias to help build a base. At the moment, the blog is really intended for employers and myself and it is not based on trying to accumulate or direct web traffic.

So while I'm happy to share my information, I don't want to link it from this account.

> It's incredibly generous and secure of you to actually share your notes and progress.

The notes are usually pretty barebones. Here's an example of the kind of information in my google sheet:

5/22/18

• Read SQL Server Pro Internals
  
  • PG 200-240
    
• Worked on Stairway to XML Series on SQL Central
  
  • Stairways 3 and 4
    
    5/23/18
    
• Read Exam Ref 70-762 Developing SQL Databases
  
  • PG 300-324 (Need to find additional articles on temporal tables.)
    
• Temporal Database practice
  
  • 40 minutes in World Wide Importers
    
    Then if I have done any work / notations, I add them to a folder and upload them to my github.
    
    If you are interested in other examples of how I did things, let me know specifically and I can get you a scrubbed / masked version. Here's my list of recommended resources that appears in my 762 study guide though:
    
    Exam 70-762
    
    Exam policies and FAQ
    
    Course 20762B: Developing SQL Databases
    
    https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/4690/study-materials-for-developing-sql-databases-exam-70762/
    
    https://www.amazon.com/T-SQL-Fundamentals-3rd-Itzik-Ben-Gan/dp/150930200X
    
    https://www.amazon.com/T-SQL-Querying-Developer-Reference-Ben-Gan/dp/0735685045/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0/138-3143892-2208566?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=E5CA9HQ5WEXP7RPBE1B1
    
    https://www.amazon.com/Pro-Server-Internals-Dmitri-Korotkevitch/dp/1484219635/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520887778&sr=1-1&keywords=sql+server+internal+pro

thenewboston.org is a really good tutorial website. I like the Head Start HTML & CSS book, then the O'Reilly book, PHP,mySQL,JavaScript, and CSS (all in one book)

Here is the link to the book. I am on chapter 4 and so far it is pretty good. They explain everything like you have never touch it before, which is good.

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step---Step/dp/1449319262/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1343577123&sr=8-2&keywords=learning+php%2C+MySql%2C+and+JavaScript

Oh, and here is the one to the Head First HTML & CSS one
http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-HTML-Elisabeth-Robson/dp/0596159900

If you read both of these books, you will be well prepared to tackle web development projects. Then, when you want to learn more about a programming language (Like JavaScript) you can either buy the JavaScript book from O'Reilly, or watch the more advanced TheNewBoston tutorial videos.

Good luck!

Senior Level Software Engineer Reading List

Read This First

1. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
   
   

   Fundamentals
   

   
   

2. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
   
3. Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions
   
4. Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML
   
5. Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
   
6. Rework
   
7. Writing Secure Code
   
8. Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries
   
   

   Development Theory
   

   
   

9. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
   
10. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
    
11. Introduction to Functional Programming
    
12. Design Concepts in Programming Languages
    
13. Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
    
14. Modern Operating Systems
    
15. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
16. The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
    
17. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
    
    

    Philosophy of Programming
    

    
    

18. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It
    
19. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
    
20. The Elements of Programming Style
    
21. A Discipline of Programming
    
22. The Practice of Programming
    
23. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
    
24. Object Thinking
    
25. How to Solve It by Computer
    
26. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

27. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
    
28. The Intentional Stance
    
29. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine
    
30. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    
31. The Timeless Way of Building
    
32. The Soul Of A New Machine
    
33. WIZARDRY COMPILED
    
34. YOUTH
    
35. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

36. Software Tools
    
37. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language
    
38. Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
    
39. Practical Parallel Programming
    
40. Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computer Systems
    
41. Mastering Regular Expressions
    
42. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
    
43. Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C
    
44. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
    
45. The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
    
46. SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design
    
47. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
    
48. Data Crunching: Solve Everyday Problems Using Java, Python, and more.
    
    

    Design
    

    
    

49. The Psychology Of Everyday Things
    
50. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
    
51. Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
    
52. The Non-Designer's Design Book
    
    

    History
    

    
    

53. Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality
    
54. Death March
    
55. Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
    
56. The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
    
57. The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad
    
58. In the Beginning...was the Command Line
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    

59. The Art of UNIX Programming
    
60. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
    
61. Programming Windows
    
62. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
    
63. Starting Forth: An Introduction to the Forth Language and Operating System for Beginners and Professionals
    
64. lex & yacc
    
65. The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
    
66. C Programming Language
    
67. No Bugs!: Delivering Error Free Code in C and C++
    
68. Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied
    
69. Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
    
70. Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
    
    

    DevOps Reading List
    

    
    

71. Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart
    
72. The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services
    
73. The Practice of System and Network Administration: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT
    
74. Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale
    
75. DevOps: A Software Architect's Perspective
    
76. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
    
77. Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
    
78. Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry
    
79. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
    
80. Migrating Large-Scale Services to the Cloud

TL:DR but I agree with the headings. HTML, CSS, php, MySQL, js. In fact I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0596157134. For some layout examples use Chromes Inpector to study other peoples sites and play with frameworks such as http://html5boilerplate.com/ and http://blueprintcss.org/. There are lots of great tutorials to get your feet wet with js and php scripts. In fact the book I suggested has awesome scripts you create that are reusable throughout lots of page designs.

The book Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5 was one of the most useful PHP books I read as a newcomer to PHP. It's very basic but it teaches how you can start using PHP to do useful and interesting things.

After making it though that book, I think PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice is a really good next step. It will help you learn to design, organize, and write your code to a more professional standard. It will also help you better understand the workings of a PHP framework.

> I'm trying to learn programming had have chosen as my language of choice.

What? What language have you chosen?! The suspense is killing me!

But seriously, this tutorial on Tizag was very helpful to me when I was first learning PHP a few years ago.

And the book PHP and MySQL Web Development is huge, and I never technically "finished" reading it, but it's certainly got some good stuff in it and I would recommend you check it out.

By and far, the best way to learn any kind of programming, is to just do it! Before I started reading programming books, I only knew exactly enough to do what I wanted to do. Choose a project to start with and keep Googling until you figure out how to make it a reality.

Let us know if you need any further help!

> I want to return response in real time to javascript

I'm about to get really thorough with my response so, "hold on to your butts"

 

As /u/Mike312 hinted at, this is not how PHP and vanilla Javascript works, and as such you would have to seek alternative frameworks or languages(like Websockets, NodeJS) or you can keep reading for an alternate solution.
 

What you must understand is that PHP is code that lives on and is rendered on the back-end (server). That means that by the time the front-end (browser) has access to the page, the PHP code on the server has already executed.

 

Now that you better understand relationship between PHP & Javascript means you have two options, a simple one and a more complex one:

 

Simple Option: Abandon real-time
 

Since you seem to be a beginner when it comes to PHP, this is the option I recommend as it is the simplest and fastest. In this case, you would have something on the front-end, like a button, that would call a new page. This page will render the results of the function I provided you.
 

To break it down:
 

1. You press a button in the browser.
    
   
2. The button redirects you to a new page.
    
   
3. The new page has the PHP function I provided you above, and runs it.
    
   
4. A page is the rendered to the user saying something like "After X attempts, here are the results: "
    
    
   
    
   
   Complex Option: Explore AJAX
    
   
   AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML allows your browser(front-end) to make calls to your server (back-end) without reloading the page. This means that, as an example, you can create a button on the front-end that executes a javascript function. The javascript function would then make an AJAX call to your server, and you could return that server data WITHOUT having to reload your page. Please see the link I provided above for a very good example.
   
   I won't write up full on code for you that shows you how the HTML/JS/AJAX/PHP all interact but, here is an outline of how I would do it:
    
   
   
5. Modify the fgcContents function I gave you above to only take in a URL, and only return results and data. Since you are using AJAX, your front-end should manage and return the number of attempts. This will be explained in more depth later
   
   
6. Create an HTML page with a button.
    
   
   
7. Have the button trigger a Javascript function
    
   
   
8. Have the JS function define two variables, the number of attempts and the URL to hit (the url is where your PHP code will reside).
    
   
   
9. With those variables defined, build out your AJAX request using the url variable, but do NOT call it yet. Instead, define a loop that will repeat X times, with X representing the variable you defined above as the "number of attempts".
    
   
   
10. Inside the loop, make the AJAX call, but also add checks for whether or not the AJAX call failed or succeeded.
     
    
    

• If the AJAX call succeeded: This means that the AJAX call was successful, it does NOT mean that your fgcContents function was successful, so you need to examine the results of the call (which should be the results of the "fgcContents" function) and use javascript to update your HMTL. For example, if "fgcContents" returns an array where "results" is TRUE, then you can update or add some HTML on your page that says "Attempts: 1 and Data: your_data_here". If results is "false" ("fgcContents" returns an array where "results" is FALSE), then you can update your HTML to list out the number of failed attempts, and with each failed attempt, the users page will update, thus providing you real-time results.
  
  
• If the AJAX call failed: Again, this does NOT mean the fgcContents function failed, it just means the AJAX call did not go through. This can happen due to errors in your code, network issues, etc. Either way you will need to capture this and report it to the user somehow.
  
   
  
  I know this is a lot of info to take in, but it should help implement a simple solution, then as your knowledge grows you can implement the complex solution.
   
  
  As a side note, if you are really looking into learning front-end/back-end development, I recommend the following books:
  
  Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set
  
  PHP & MySQL Development

Html/CSS are quite easy to learn I think, a good place to start would be here.
You should not focus about javascript at first, just use a librairy like jquery and jqueryui to do all the basic stuff. You should look into php wich is much more useful.

I would recommend this book Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, also this one is pretty good Professional Web 2.0 Programming.

For books about Webdesign I can recommend the smashing book 1&2 by Smashing Magazine

>But basically after that I have to decide soon whether or not to focus on a Cisco, or Microsoft track at my college.

Sounds like your "college" is a joke. You should be learning the fundamentals that are responsible for the underpinnings of these technologies, not vendor recommendations that can easily almost be called propaganda. Especially at your beginner level, you wouldn't even touch technologies as part of your responsibility at the level taught by an MCSE or CCNA unless you work for an absolute moron.

The world is larger than Cisco and Microsoft. I suggest you look for actual academic books on Networking and Server Architecture to learn more useful things.

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (6th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0132856204/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_4Ev3wbE0EVGDH

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services, 2nd Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0672323168/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_KFv3wbW3QNAGF

For future tracks:

Databases:

SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL (3rd Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321992474/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_SGv3wbGCZ24FA

Fundamentals of Database Systems (7th Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133970779/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_qHv3wb1YC95NS

Security:

Computer Security: Principles and Practice (3rd Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133773922/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_ZHv3wb7J1YJKC

Blue Team Handbook: Incident Response Edition: A condensed field guide for the Cyber Security Incident Responder. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1500734756/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_uIv3wbK1361D2

Hardware:

Upgrading and Repairing PCs (22nd Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789756102/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_gJv3wbCKGA502

Problem Solving:

The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812928083/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_XKv3wbKQFJK6Q

Best of luck. I recommend learning Shell languages and the basics of shell navigation and data manipulation techniques for various operating systems as well.

I would be useful to find out which specific DBMS they use but in the meantime I would recommend getting SQL in 10 Minutes, Sams Teach Yourself.

The book teaches ASNI (American National Standards Institute) SQL - all the general main concepts like SELECT, UPDATE that all DBMS share.

It has 22 chapters that each take 10 mins to read (but you should spend more time after each chapter practicing examples). It was incredibly helpful for me when I started learning as i knew 0 about SQL. There's a reason that books it #1 Best Seller. Once you find out what database they use you can learn DBMS-specific functions in addition.

I learnt by reading PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites
It is written for PHP 5.6 so it is outdated (unless they have updated it since)


The follow on book is also worth reading. It helped me understand how to use OOP in PHP

PHP Advanced and Object-Oriented Programming

When I read these books they were written for PHP 5.6. PHP is now on 7.2 and there has been a lot of features since then. It'll still help you get a practical grasp of PHP.

As cout112 suggested, PHP the right way is a really good resource too. I highly recommend going through some of the pages.

Best of luck with the new job.

I learn by doing: Become a PHP developer from Treehouse. I have found that treehouse is pretty basic for learning, but you are leaning by project based. They do keep adding stuff though, this is not apart of the learning adventure but they just finished using PHP with MYSQL. I like the flow and challenges and type everything out that they are doing. There is also this great PHP book, it was written in 2008 but I didn't have any trouble with the text, or project. You basically build a dynamic web app that you keep adding features to. First book I have picked up that kept me interested from chapter to chapter. I normally get programming books and never read them, or get super bored with them.

tl:dr; make websites and learn Search Engine Optimisation

The context of my starting point is important, hence the detail:

I'm 26 now, and after leaving sixth-form I became the full time carer of my Dad and as a result haven't worked a normal job, now I'm trying to get in to work from basically step 0, and struggling massively to even get a rejection email/letter.

In that time I volunteered for a media charity that does hospital radio & internet radio, and I made 5 websites for them. When we launched an internet radio station from scratch, I made their website. Without me they would have needed to pay money we just can't spare. When you search "[Local area] radio" it's on the very first page of Google results, even ahead of 'radio directory' websites. Companies in our area are contacting us to work with us, they say they find us on Google. I learned everything I know in my free time without paying a penny. They tried to bring people on from a local college to assist me when my time was short and couldn't find anyone to do even basic tasks.

It's a great skill to have and it's in demand. It's easy to learn. There's pre-made software you can build upon such as WordPress. If you look in your local area it's very easy to find companies with shitty websites that can be convinced to pay you, and that is where I am currently heading. I picked up a huge book to finally formally learn PHP, JavaScript etc and next year I'll start my company. I already have a portfolio and proof my work is effective.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-HTML5-Step/dp/1491949465

If you don't want to hunt down books, there are an infinite number of free resources for all skill levels.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/web

There're these books, with the sort of meta, job/project wisdom I think, being glancingly familiar with them (though I haven't read either, they just look like what you're looking for). For what it's worth they're both well-known developers.

97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts

And -

Chad Fowler's "The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development"

I'm currently reading Head First PHP & MySQL and think it's excellent. I started some other books, but this one seems to present everything in the most logical order.

I'm also reading sections of the official MySQL manual -- I downloaded the 3000+ pages into my Kindle so I can carry it around with me and bookmark pages. It has a lot of useful details that books don't seem to mention.

Probably the most useful learning tool is actually trying to do something with it. I came up with a couple little projects which eventually may be a useful website, so I'm working on that when I can.

Hope this helps.

Great resources for learning:
http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
Books:
Head First PHP & MYSQL AND
PHP 6 and MYSQL 5.

The trick is to repeat the same things over and over and then you will begin to pick them up and remember them off by heart.

I had been idol for the past month until a couple of days ago when I started developing an old site and It took me a little while to remember basic things like creating a class or remembering certain queries.

It's a bit like riding a bike. Just hang in there.

I started learning SQL by reading Itzik Ben-Gan's T-SQL Fundamentals. It's a fantastic text that I read cover to cover. One of the chapters on ACID was extremely boring (that's mostly DBA stuff) but other than that I thought it was very interesting. Microsoft also has an EdX course that's similar to the book if you'd prefer to use that.

As far as applying it goes, I set up multiple databases. So I had SQL Server, postgres, Access, and SQLite. I didn't get to apply it at my last job, but our DBA was comfortable enough with my knowledge to create a schema for me so that I could use postgres instead of having to use MS Access. I also personally found that employers were fairly impressed by it.

Well said.

To add to this, if you're looking for a good book on PHP, I'd highly recommend Larry Ullman's 3 book series, although since you're already familiar with programming in general, I'd start with the second one (http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Dynamic-Web-Sites/dp/0321784073/) and then the third one (http://www.amazon.com/PHP-Advanced-Object-Oriented-Programming-QuickPro/dp/0321832183/).

Magento is a world in its own. If you can master it though, your value as webdev will increase significantly. Good luck!

Hello, I would suggest to get a good book on SQL basics, install an open source free database server like MySQL on your mac (via DMG) http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/macosx-installation.html and just get the basic commands. Nothing to get certified in. The user side, you, are just going to perform basic commands. Database Administrators with bazillion years of experience (/s) will take care of the data servers for the users, you. Good luck.

A good book for you would probably be:
SQL Queries for mere mortals.

http://www.amazon.com/SQL-Queries-Mere-Mortals-Hands-/dp/0321992474/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426695830&sr=8-1&keywords=sql+for+mortals

Any SQL certification for you, as a data analyst or a financial analyst, is completely useless. Just get the practical skills and show them on your interview.

If you have any experience with manipulating tables in general then learning how to use a (MySQL) database is relatively intuitive, provided that you aren't concerned with optimization issues such as normalizing tables, scaling problems down the road, or managing any fancy relationships. I'm sorry for how demoralizing this sounds but... based on the needs you've described you could probably teach yourself all you'd need for that project and how to interact with a MySQL database via PHP in less time than its taken you jump through all these hoops trying to use Google spreadsheets.

Here's a good and relatively cheap book on the matter.

I read that book as a CS undergrad before taking any database classes and it helped quite a bit; in particular the chapters on MySQL are very concise and easy to read. Even if you've never seen PHP before just seeing MySQL syntax for the first time hopefully leads to a "oh well duh that's all very intuitive" moment. Hopefully it will help give you a better understanding of the larger picture and how these languages interact with each other.

Note: There are tons of other great, free resources online that you can peruse at your leisure without paying for a book.

I know this isn't super helpful since you're using videos, but starting out, this book can be pretty handy.

What I like about Head First is that all of their lessons are built around real-world tasks, and they build off one another from lesson to lesson (as opposed to a bunch of random one-off projects). In the PHP book's case, the very first few chapters show you exactly how to get a database up and running, how to connect to it, and how to build pages to create a mailing list, 'unsubscribe' form, 'post to blog' form, etc.

I had zero PHP expertise when I started the book, and within a week or two I had built all that's described above, and was already figuring out ways to extend functionality, tweak, etc.

FWIW, I also think that starting out, it's worth just getting some hosting space through godaddy or any other cheap host that'll give you quick dashboard access to phpmyadmin. It'll make creating databases with mysql (which the aforementioned book also explains) a snap, and you won't have to deal with a bunch of Apache/OS-level headaches.

Work on your code/portfolio in your spare time and apply to any job that interests you.

In terms of how to improve your code, I'd take a look at these resources:

HTML/CSS

• http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/
  
• http://learn.shayhowe.com/advanced-html-css/
  
  Javascript
  
  
• http://javascriptbook.com/
  
  PHP/MySQL
  
  
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-PHP-MySQL-JavaScript-Javascript/dp/1491918667
  
  Or look online for any good resources for whatever technology you want to get into.
  
  Good luck :)

Relational databases are definitely a lot better and scalable in the long run than excel spread sheets. I would recommend the book "Teach yourself SQL in 10 minutes" as a great way to familiarize yourself with the basics.

http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-Minutes-Edition/dp/0672336073

SQL is insanely easy. Like, learn enough of it in a week to do real work easy. Everyone used to recommend this book But you can probably find better sources these days on youtube or something.

For python, you can find tons of resources online.

R is like SAS. It's a programming language geared specifically for doing statistics/data analysis.

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!

For PHP and MYSQL I really liked this book:

http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Web-Development-Edition/dp/0672329166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372691445&sr=8-1&keywords=php+and+mysql+web+development

It doesn't have much in the way of JS, and it is not free, but the 20 dollar kindle version is worth it in my opinion. The high reviews are accurate, and the author doesn't spend much time with stuff like "this is a variable, a variable is blahblah!!"

I haven't made it all the way through yet, as I am currently picking up Java at the same time for work, but so far the book is great.

LOL, I am also a Junior PHP developer with a Java background ( I didn't want to work for a big corporation doing Java). I took a whole summer to read this and that was more than enough to get the basis of PHP. Its way easier than Java for sure. Good luck.

Let me clarify a little. It's helpful to find books that I can digest from the ground up on and compare with current standards or use creatively. Simple put I enjoy doing the homework on a book. What I am look to accomplish is to write SQL Queries for corporate finances and manufacturing. Working in the environment I am in currently allows me the opportunity to learn and practice it.


Here are a few I looked into:

https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Minutes-Sams-Teach-Yourself/dp/0672336073/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1519240184&sr=8-4&keywords=beginning+SQL

https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Beginners-Learning-Programming-Course/dp/1532716958/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1519240184&sr=8-14&keywords=beginning+SQL


https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Practice-Problems-learn-doing/dp/1520807635/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1519239367&sr=8-7&keywords=beginning+SQL

Mastering Regular Expressions is a joy to read and makes you a better user of this powerful (and misunderstood) tool.

SQL in 10 Minutes is easily the best introduction to the most common SQL you'll need to use unless you're actually planning on being a full DBA. Anyone who ever needs to step outside of an ORM should have a basic understanding of SQL and this book is it. Short, understandable, and to the point.

A lot of the books that really helped me as a developer back in the late 90s and early 00s just aren't as relevant anymore:

• JavaScript, the Definitive Guide by David Flanagan (just use online resources)
  
• The ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit — I don't do much ColdFusion development anymore, Ben Forta's book is way out-of-date, and again most of the info you need is now online.
  
  Then there are books about programming. These books still remain fairly relevant even as technologies change.
  
  
• Code Complete & Rapid Development, both by Steve McConnel
  
• Head First Design Patterns
  
• Don't Make Me Think (more about interface design; an essential read for people who touch the front end)

I would recommend the following:

https://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp

Good clear explanations about the basics including examples.

And in combination with the above following book:
Sams Teach Yourself Sql in 10 minutes
https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Minutes-Sams-Teach-Yourself/dp/0672336073

Good luck!

Hhm. Well, first of all, I think you might have a hard time finding a book that will teach about both design and web development. Each of those are complicated enough to write separate books on. I think you'll be better off by finding two separate books (one on web dev, one on design) than finding one that combines both.

A kind of the same goes for Web. Dev. This is such a broad term, that you will hardly find any book that tries to cram in every possible aspect of web development. If you are a bit more specific and focus on a specific technology (like NodeJS, ASP.net with Angular or just plain old PHP, MySQL and JavaScript ) you'll get more value for money. There are more generic books out there, but the technologies (especially for web dev) change almost daily and books simply can't keep up with that. If you'd ask me, I think you'll be much better off having a good understanding of JavaScript in general before you move on to a specific stack or framework.

When I was trying to learn PHP a major deterrence was thinking of projects. When I would Google what to test my skills on, the list would go from something basic like a calculator to a full blown content management system. Pretty difficult in terms of skill gap. So I bought Beginning PHP and MYSQL when I was starting out and it's pretty straight forward: http://www.amazon.ca/Beginning-PHP-MySQL-Professional-Edition/dp/1430231149/ref=pd_rhf_se_shvl1

PHP for Absolute Beginners might be good for you as well: http://www.amazon.ca/PHP-Absolute-Beginners-Jason-Lengstorf/dp/1430224738/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343452516&sr=8-1

You don't need to have formal coursework or a certification.


Learn however much you need to so that you feel comfortable honestly putting it on your resume in some way. Even if this means that your resume includes something along the lines of 'light SQL experience'. If you get into an interview make sure you set the right expectation about any skills listed on your resume like this. From the mouth of a VP - "I know this job won't require (insert random skill here). I put that on there so that I have an HR friendly reason to reject any candidate."


All that being said, check out this book:


https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Minutes-Sams-Teach-Yourself/dp/0672336073


It should get you a good enough understanding to be able to talk about SQL in an interview (assuming you level set with them correctly) to demonstrate that you took the job seriously enough to start learning. It's not a lot by any means, but it can give you an opportunity to convince the person interviewing you that you can learn it if needed.

SQL in 10 Minutes

This was the book used in an introductory course I took. It did a pretty good job of explaining everything and was pretty easy to follow.

Relational DB Design - Here's a quick "MySQL Database Design Tutorial" result from Google.

Beginning PHP & MySQL - Here's a well rated book from Amazon. I've enjoyed the Apress books I've gotten in the past, and this one seems well reviewed. I assume, building a website, you are going to start with MySQL and PHP. I could be wrong in this assumption, and if so check out other Beginning and Introductory Database books for something more appropriate to your chosen starting point.

A look through Wikipedia Database Normalization would also be enlightening (with some interesting external links at the bottom for further learning as well).

The goal of database normalization is to remove duplication... so you'd have your "Person" table, with Person# (Unique ID of sorts), LName, FName, MI, etc.

Then you'd have your "Quotes" table: Person#, Quote#, Quote. Each Person# and Quote# is a unique combination that identifies the person and quote.

Add other tables for Video Links (Person#, Link#, Link, Description, etc), Snippets (Person#, Snippet#, Snippet)... etc.

The goal is such that when you update a persons Name (Sally gets married or corrects a typo in her name), you don't have to update every table.

That looks like a pretty solid book. I have used PHP and MySQL: The Developers Guide in the past and it has served me well. I used it in college and bought myself a copy a while back. However, I will caution that I know several versions of PHP or SQL, or specifically how it connects has changed since the release of the book. I have found that the PHP information is otherwise accurate and very helpful.

Not SQLServer specific, but Joe Celko's "SQL For Smarties" is a great reference for all things SQL: http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-Smarties-Fourth-Edition/dp/0123820227

Head First PHP & Mysql

The Head First series is really good, they will walk you through the language using numerous mini projects and some bigger ones, giving you a little head start in the right direction for each one. The books in this series always get great review

Wow. Thanks for the list. Yep, that's pretty much what I had in mind - and I suppose I'm doing this to learn and to have a working system at the end of all of this. As for my knowledge, I'm NOT very smart in PHP or MySQL. I've been reading a book called PHP and MySQL Web Development it's long, but I hope to be familiar with the language as I take my time with it throughout my life.

Thanks man, had to hunt down the UK link but definitely appreciate it!

I'd recommend this book. The examples start you off small, and in many chapters they build upon each other as well. They go over important concepts including things that you may not think about right off the bat, like Security. It's the book I used when I got started, and I just adapted the examples to my own needs as I was going through the book.

C# is a good language to get started with.

I recommend buying a book to get started, this will give your self-learning more structure.

Other great languages to start with are: Ruby and Python.

PHP is really easy to learn and get started with, but you're pretty much stuck doing only web applications then.

It depends. Is it an idea for a shipping cart or a blog or something simple? There are drop in apps to do a lot of the repeatable stuff.

> should try to take the time to learn how to make a good website

Of course, this is wholly dependent on both the complexity of the site you want to create, and your ability / willingness to learn how to program. If you do decide to give it a shot, I'd recommend picking up this book.

http://db-class.org is open this quarter, and covers the fundamental relational database concepts.

SQL and Relational Theory is a solid next step. (and available using the free 10 day Safari Books Online trial account)

For specific syntax, refer to Microsoft's own product documentation. The SQL Server Books Online should have been installed on your workstation along with the client tools if you're using SSMS. The T-SQL language reference begins here.

You might also want to install one of the SQL Server editions on a workstation as a playground so you don't need to worry about breaking your production servers. Developer Edition is under $50 a seat. Express is free. There's also a time-limited full evaluation copy available here.

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step-Step/dp/0596157134/ref=pd_sxp_grid_i_1_0

I recommend the above. What you want sounds pretty easy, and this book could get you there in just a few days.

Your idea of not wanting to study anything unnecessary is a bit unrealistic, it's like saying you just want to fix your Honda and not understand how cars work. You need to understand a huge amount of random tech that all will require some study or you will be perpetually lost.

I would recommend a book like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Learning-PHP-MySQL-JavaScript-Javascript/dp/1491978910/

And just read it in order it recommends.

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Depending on what you are looking to do, and how ambitious you are, you can use something like Parse if you wanted.

The cheapest way, and the most customizable is using JSON, PHP, and MySQL. You can calculate, do whatever, and give it back to the app. [This] (http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Web-Development-4th/dp/0672329166/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397851709&sr=1-1&keywords=php+and+mysql+web+development) is a good book on PHP and MySQL. A simple tutorial on how to use JSON in Android and PHP should get you on the right track.

First don't think of this as "DBA" stuff - you're a developer, you need to know database technology, period. Read this rant by Dennis Forbes in response to Digg's CTO's complaints about databases it's very reminiscent of TFA.

Read Data and Reality by the late William Kent (here's a free copy) and get a fundamental understanding of "information" vs. "data". Then read Information Modeling and Relational Databases to pickup a couple practical approaches to modeling (ER & OR). Now read The Datawarehouse Toolkit to learn dimensional modeling and when to use it. Practice designing effective models, build some production databases from scratch, inherit some, revisit your old designs, learn from your mistakes, write lots and lots and lots of SQL (if you want to get tricky with SQL I suggest to pickup Celko's SQL for smarties - it's like the Hacker's Delight for SQL).

Many strange models you may encounter in the wild are actually optimizations. Some are premature, some outright stupid, and some brilliant, if you want to be able to tell one from the other then you're going to dive deep into internals. Do this generically with Modern Information Retrieval and Managing Gigabytes then for specific RDBMSs Pro SQL Server Internals, PostgreSQL Internals, Oracle CORE, etc.

Reflect on how awesome practically every modern RDBMS is as a great technological achievement for mankind and how wonderful it is to be standing on the shoulders of giants. Roll your eyes a little bit whenever you overhear another twenty-something millenial fresh CS graduate who skipped every RDBMS elective bleat about NoSQL, Mongo, whatever. Try not to fly into murderous rage when another loud-mouthed know-nothing writes at length about how bad RDBMS technology is when they couldn't be bothered to learn the most basic requisite skills and knowledge to use one competently.

If you don't really know how to code, I would vote for PHP. There are tons of books, tons more examples, and is pretty easy to get started on with WAMP and LAMP stacks.

I personally started PHP using this book: http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-MySQL-Lynn-Beighley/dp/0596006306

But, if you don't want to take a formal training after this, dive in. It'll take a bit, but you can search and read for the stuff directly what your after. I have built a couple applications this way, and was fun.

You should check out PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites by Larry Ullman, http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Dynamic-Web-Sites/dp/032152599X

Really a good book for an intro to dynamic web sites with PHP.

I ran into a similar conundrum. If you read the 70-461 or T-SQL Fundamentals, they have practice problems that are related. The 70-761 does not contain practice testing material.

Apart from that, it's recommended to do the more official practice tests if you decide you need one. They are supposed to be more difficult than the real test, but I do not have any experience taking the practice tests. I am thinking of trying the 762 practice test though.

I did use one other resource that was a practice test and I'll list it below, but here's a copy from my site that lists my favorite resources from when I studied for my 761.

My favorite resources:

https://www.cathrinewilhelmsen.net/2015/01/28/preparing-for-and-taking-exam-70-461-querying-microsoft-sql-server-2012/

https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/4644/sql-server-exam-70761-study-material-for-querying-data-with-transactsql/

https://www.amazon.com/T-SQL-Fundamentals-3rd-Itzik-Ben-Gan/dp/150930200X

https://www.amazon.com/Training-70-461-Querying-Microsoft-Server/dp/0735666059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513628070&sr=8-1&keywords=70%3D461

https://www.amazon.com/Exam-70-761-Querying-Data-Transact-SQL/dp/1509304339/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513628083&sr=1-1&keywords=70-761

http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/70761-practice-test-questions.aspx#.WeeTWVtSypo

https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/4015/introducing-json-for-sql-server-2016/

https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/4073/sql-server-2016-advanced-json-techniques--part-1/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/json/json-data-sql-server

https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/3680/introduction-to-sql-server-2016-temporal-tables/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/select-group-by-transact-sql

https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1958/sql-server-cross-apply-and-outer-apply/

Super basic: http://ineasysteps.com/products-page/all_books/php-mysql-in-easy-steps/

If you want a better book: http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Web-Development-Edition/dp/0672329166

Intro to PHP/MySQL: http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-MySQL-Lynn-Beighley/dp/0596006306

More advanced SQL knowledge: http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-SQL-Brain-Learners/dp/0596526849

More advanced PHP knowledge: http://www.amazon.com/PHP-Object-Oriented-Solutions-David-Powers/dp/1430210117

Go in that order, you'll be very comfortable in a few months.

buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step-Step/dp/0596157134
and never look back.
If you want to go beyond any basic template for wordpress or anything else, you should check out PHP a little bit. Its super fucking easy.

The O'Reilly head first series of books are great. They offer an easy to understand and read book. These books go over the basics while teaching you PHP. http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-MySQL-Lynn-Beighley/dp/0596006306

Hey, I briefed over some of the comments here, and while I feel a number of them are useful and necessary, I think you need an actual hard copy book to start with, rather than jumping right the hell into the manuals.

The book I started with, with absolute minimal programming experience (just some C++ classes in high school), is Larry Ullman's PHP book. I started on the second edition, and it was everything I needed to get started programming with PHP and making dynamic applications. It should cover basics of MySQL and top the book off with regular expressions, which are absolutely necessary to any serious web developer, and he makes everything feel very accessible.

After some months of that and programming, you would be ready to enhance your skills, and his follow up Advanced PHP book covers a lot of interesting and esoteric areas. It might be more than you need, but it does start off with some practical chapters in OOP and classes.

In-between the two, he wrote a MySQL and PHP combination book that sort of acts as a stepping stone between the beginner's book and the advanced book, and it might actually be the most you need to program in PHP, but I found the Advanced book handy to use, and the first book I linked you was my personal guide and reference for about a year and a half as I grew in my skill set.

I started with Head First PHP & MySQL when I started years ago. Two books I loved the most though were Beginning PHP and MySQL From Novice to Professional and PHP Solutions Dynamic Web Design Made Easy.

Later this book helped me immensely PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice.

Ultimately, php.net is your bible and you can learn everything from there alone. Post on forums and ask for help. Try something and stick with it, don't jump around creating dozens of projects but stick with one and expand it.

Also this

If you want to get serious and take it to the next level you should check out Microsoft SQL certification.

https://www.amazon.com/T-SQL-Fundamentals-3rd-Itzik-Ben-Gan/dp/150930200X/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?keywords=Microsoft+sql&qid=1558398701&s=gateway&sr=8-6

The author is amazing. He also has some good videos on MSDN or Microsoft Learning.