Learning PHP

[GandalfTheOld]

going through a crash-course in php coding right now... i don't understand why of all unholy times i had to choose NOW when i have two presentations to prepare for... one for later today at 6pm and another on wednesday at 7:30pm....
fudge.
but i'm too curious...
right now all i know is that i'm ripping styles off my favorite sites and bending them towards my liking... (the frame stuff is fun)

i'm finding this site rather helpful in my wanderings...

i'll post my site up when it's actually presentable... (the only thing that looks anything decent is the index.html page that you start off with... and it only redirects to index.php ....)

this is kind of a joint-project in my free time with the art-drawing stuff...

any pointers, hints, and tutorials for a newbie like me would be appreciated

[SS]

any pointers, hints, and tutorials for a newbie like me would be appreciated

Give up. Learn Coldfusion.

[GandalfTheOld]

could try...
but hard to see the point in it when i can't tell if the school server is compatible with ColdFusion... ( this site is giving me the idea that i'd "have to convince them to purchase and install it.")
especially when i've tested and found php to be working... for the most part. (still don't understand why that Invision Power Board stuff didn't work right on the server...)

[SS]

You could get a personal version for free... supposed to only work from a single IP after 30 days, but my flatmate can still access mine, so it appears to work across the network.

The money is the only real bad thing about the language... that and it being owned by evil Macromedia.

Meh. If PHP works then it works, and no need to install stuff. It's a crap language though.

[Hornet]

I'm learning PHP as well - why's ColdFusion better?

[evilknight]

because that's what ss uses. and apparently whatever he uses is the best.

[SS]

Coldfusion is tag based, which is a much nicer method of coding.
It can do everything that PHP can do, and a lot of things are easier.
It has far more obvious function names (eg: ListToArray instead of explode)
It's variables don't require stupid dollar signs at the start.
You can easily do multi-line SQL statements with the cfquery tag.
It has proper structured scopes, none of this $_GET["varname"] crap that PHP uses.
It has good built-in error handling, unlike PHP which allows you to use @ to supress errors.

That's just a few reasons, I can give more if you like.

because that's what ss uses. and apparently whatever he uses is the best.

Oh yes, and - of course - that is the most important reason.

[Hornet]

But you have to pay for it, which is a major downside for me.

[SS]

You don't have to pay for the personal version, but yeah - the proper servers cost the same per month as most PHP ones do per year.