| Professional PHP6 was written for PHP developers who are interested in expanding and leveraging their development skills by taking advantage of the features of the sixth major release. This demographic is not set in stone, of course, because experienced .NET and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) developers should catch on quickly, too. However, inexperienced PHP developers (or those with no software development experience) are highly encouraged to start with Beginning PHP6, Apache, MySQL 6 Web Development (Wiley, 2009).
The beauty of PHP is its accessibility and shallow learning curve. Virtually anyone with basic computing knowledge can pick it up and start putting together simple, dynamic Web sites. Indeed, it is qualities like these that have led to PHP powering more than 20 million Web sites across the globe, a figure that is growing by the thousands every day. However, that very accessibility has led to a lack of uniformity in development approach, and perhaps an absence of the application of industry - standard best practices. Put simply, a lot of PHP code isn ’ t that great .
As a result, this book ventures beyond mere syntax and is designed to help you deliver better - quality software in a shorter amount of time. If you ’ ve ever been told not to use PHP because it ’ s “ not enterprise grade, ” then this book is for you, because you ’ re about to learn how to prove such doubters wrong. Much of what you ’ ll learn (although written with PHP6 in mind) is not limited to the PHP language. Many of the development techniques are directly translatable into other traditional high - level languages, and the skills you ’ ll learn here will follow you the rest of your career. |
