[Webdev] Reading material for near newbie

[adam beecher]

> interesting meeting last night, very enjoyable.
>
Musta gone to the wrong meeting. :)

> I was wondering if anyone could suggest some useful texts/sites where I could
> learn some of the theory behind current web practice and/or some *useful*
> langauges to learn. I've recently been trying a little C++ and perl, and am
> currently ploughing my way thru java, mostly thru the O'Rielly books on the
> subjects(UCC library copies, so slightly outdated). I'd also be real
> interested in getting involved in the creation of a website for this
> list as I learn best by doing.
>

"Learn best by doing"? So I'm not the only one then? Ah, an ally!

Standard answer from my direction - learn PHP. Perl is great, and it's how I got
to PHP so there must have been some advantage to it, but for pure web stuff, PHP
is yer man. But learn Perl too. There's also Python/Zope, but IMO it tends to
try to be a jack-of-all-trades. C++ (theoretically, because I haven't learned it
yet) is excellent for big apps, or if you want to hide your code, although PHP
Phour - particularly when the Optomizer and Compiler go on general release -
would somewhat negate those advantages. There's lots of other options, but me, I
like PHP.

Books: Professional PHP from Wrox has been highly recommended to me. The
Practical SQL Handbook is also supposed to be an invaluable resource.

Sites: The best place to start for PHP is on www.php.net (or the uk mirror
uk.php.net). There's links to all the major projects, and all the sites that you
would need. And read the manual.

A WEBDEV site - I would like to get something started ASAP, however there hasn't
been much of a reaction thus far. It would be a good start to get the webspace
set up (Donncha, since Colm actually takes notice of you), and where better to
put it than webdev.linux.ie? Once again, if anyone is interested in discussing
this, I will be in a pub after the AGM. If no-one else is there, I'll talk to
myself. :)

adam