Learning PHP - start out using a framework or no?
- by Kevin Torrent
I've noticed a lot of jobs in my area for PHP. I've never used PHP before, and figure if I can get more opportunities if I pick it up then it might be a good idea. The problem is that PHP without any framework is ugly and 99% of the time really bad code. All the tutorials and books I've seen are really lousy - it never shows any kind of good programming practice but always the quick and dirty kind of way of doing things. I'm afraid that trying to learn PHP this way will just imprint these bad practices in my head and make me waste time later trying to unlearn them. I've used C# in the past so I'm familiar with OOP and software design patterns and similar.
Should I be trying to learn PHP by using one of the better known frameworks for it? I've looked at CakePHP, Symfony and the Zend Framework so far; Zend seems to be the most flexible without being too constraining like Cake and Symfony (although Symfony seemed less constraining than CakePHP which is trying too hard to be Ruby on Rails), but many tutorials for Zend I've seen assume you already know PHP and want to learn to use the framework.
What would be my best opportunity for learning PHP, but learning GOOD PHP that uses real software engineering techniques instead of spaghetti code? It seems all the PHP books and resources either assume you are just using raw PHP and therefore showcase bade practices, or that you already know PHP and therefore don't even touch on parts of the language.
