recommend some programming books?

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livingstonmedia

livingstonmedia

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Apr 17, 2008
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Portland, ME
www.blogaboutbeer.com
my birthday's coming up and I'm planning on asking for some beginning programmer books - mainly for css and php related learning. These are the 3 I'm thinking about (don't worry, not affiliate links); can anyone comment on any of these three or any additional ones I should check out? I'm definitely a programming n00b so shy away from advanced books, if you could. Thanks for the help!

Thanks, guys!
 


Completely depends on your experience and what you're looking to learn. If you're completely new and want to learn PHP, pretty much any PHP book will do the same for you. It's just a matter of learning syntax. After that the scope of books tend to grow and you can ask more specific questions.

If you're completely new to HTML even, I wouldn't really even bother buying a book to start. Just fuck around with some pages and see what you can do. I taught myself HTML in a few days in 5th grade - it's not too complicated. Combine picking apart webpages with HTML tutorials and you'll probably learn it in a few hours. Of course, when you throw CSS into the equation everything changes and you might want a book for that.

P.S. Nice to see another Mainer here. ;)
 
I agree with the online method for learning things like css. Getting a feel for css involves a good amount of trial-and-error in the beginning. HERE is a good site to learn from.

As far as books go, I would recommend looking into something for beginners in C/C++ and Java. Most of those books teach the basic syntax and fundamental structures like loops, arrays, etc.

If you know those, then PHP will be easy to pick up, since the syntax is very similar.
 
PHP has some great online documentation so I'd save your money on buying that. If you've never programmed before try The Pragmatic Bookshelf | Learn to Program it won't teach you PHP but your first language doesn't matter as much as learning how to program itself after that most languages fall into place easily and they are all pretty much the same stuff.
 
Go over to dzone.com, the Digg for programmers, and you'll find tutorial after tutorial about the kind of programming you want to learn.

I highly recommend learning by doing rather than by reading.
 
PlanetSourceCode.com is a really good place for people who want hands on learning, i learned most of what i know by picking apart other codes.
 
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