Having now began to learn the basics of MySQL and PHP, I can see this is going to be one long roller-coaster ride. Just following the book* and completing the tutorials has had its up’s and downs. I can now see this is going to be every bit as difficult as I had first anticipated.
I started by learning the basics of setting up a table in MySQL, which I must admit went rather well. It seemed quite logical using the terminal to set up the table, but only afterwards did I realise this could be done much simpler using the MyPHPAdmin section. I’m not sure why the book* didn’t advise this way of doing it from the start?.
MyPHPAdmin
Once I had created a fictional database, I went on to try and learn some basic PHP to pull information from it and display it on a webpage. When first looking at PHP, it seemed very alien to me; I mean, why are dollar signs stuck at the beginning of words?, and why the random usage of various types of brackets?.
More reading and several basic tutorials later, I was starting to get to grips with reading and understanding the language. Most of the functions were quite logical and written in plain English. Despite this, I know that if I come away from the book and start writing PHP on my own, I would have great difficulty. I think this is going to be the biggest challenge for me, but it doesn’t worry me too much, as I know there will always be great resources for me to refer to.
My next step will be to start looking at some tutorials relevant to what I want to achieve. I think time restraints will mean that just understanding and writing the things I want to achieve from my learning contract will be difficult enough, without delving too deep and trying to learn PHP on a broader scale.
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* Yank, K. [2009], Build your own database driven web site using PHP & MySQL, 4th Edition, Sitepoint.
