Reviews for Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself in 24 Hours)

1. Not for the newbie!

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2003

   If you're looking to pick up in depth PHP knowledge in 24 hours, think again! While the book has now become a valuable resource it is not written for the newbie-wannabe-programmer.
   One thing I found increasingly annoying was the sample scripts and 'tutorials'. I found none of them useful and they taught me little, most of them being scripts you would never think of using or modifying. You aren't told why or when you would use the script. (no scenario's)
   Experience in programming in other languages is critical, else this book will fly right over your head as it did with me. If you're looking to pick up a programming language, I recommend a less full and head on book such as "PHP in easy steps" by Mike Mcgrath, which breaks down the basics and explains everything a little more.
   I have found learning-by-doing has been the best route editing other people's scripts to suit my own purposes and borrowing code! ;)
   This book has eventually proven worthwhile now that I have a more in depth knowledge of PHP, I can refer to the book and find the code that may be useful for me.
   So, simply this book won't teach you PHP in 24 hours, unless your a programming genius. :)

2. An excellent introduction

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, May 12th, 2002

   I have used a number of scripting languages so this gave me a head start with PHP. I was able to skim the first chapters and get into the really good stuff. This book moves at just the right pace but it is not as suited to the complete novice as you might expect. It often points to other books in the series that you might want to read first.

   Basically if your HTML is good and you have a grounding in SQL you will find this book easy to get to grips with. In less than a week I had written a fully functioning bulletin board system using PHP and MySQL. Could have done with a CD though. That's my only serious criticism.

3. Great Beginners guide to PHP

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12rd, 2002

   This book gives you a great starting point with PHP. It goes through all the major principles and once you have read it you will be able to design your own database enabled applications. The last two chapters go through how to set up a full application and this really helps to advance your knowledge.

   Once you have read this you will have a beginner to intermediate knowledge of the language, from there you can either teach yourself furthur techniques or go on to a more advanced book.

   Overall this is a great starting PHP book, it will take longer than 24 hours however.

4. Very good

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, January 12st, 2002

   As a novice to coding I found this book a great place to start.

   It steps you through PHP 1 hour at a time.

   I am now building PHP pages and looking for a more in depth PHP/MySQL book that covers a bit more MySQL.

5. Brilliant Introduction - Excellent Examples

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12rd, 2001

   This was a brilliant introduction to PHP for me. Coming from a technical background, I skim read the first dozen or so 'hours' and got stuck into the nitty gritty examples for form handling, session management and file-uploading etc.

   However for me the best reason for buying this book was the fantastic last two chapters. These chapters cover setting up a complete web portal/community based site which allows users to login, modify their details/profile, add events to their pages and more. This was the basis on which I built a website and stood me in good stead for the job.

   As a previous reviewer mentioned, the source code does not come with the book which means a lot of typing (the last two 'hours' took more like 8 hours to type up, and I don't type that slow either;\). On the contrary though, this can be good in that it forces you to debug your code as you go along, helping you understand better why errors occur when a script is executed.

   All in all a definite recommendation for beginners (and even intermediate/advanced readers, if only for the example site in the last 2 hours).