PHP, the next step?

[Script47]

I can with confidence say that I know what's going on in most PHP scripts that I read now, and I can write things I want. But obviously I have still, a lot to learn, so what things (advanced level) should I learn? If someone could post a list of stuff that I should learn which is needed on a industry level, then I would be very grateful.

[Guest]

At industry level? Well from my view it's deceptive, a lot of people will say learn a Framework, maybe Zend or Symfony, however all the jobs I have been in used no frameworks. Knowing Wordpress is good, also Magento is useful if you want to follow the e commerce path.

[Script47]

At industry level? Well from my view it's deceptive, a lot of people will say learn a Framework, maybe Zend or Symfony, however all the jobs I have been in used no frameworks. Knowing Wordpress is good, also Magento is useful if you want to follow the e commerce path.

Ah right, so what stuff should I learn that you think will be useful?

[Dave]

Getting a good understand of OO PHP (http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/object-oriented-php-for-beginners--net-12762) is a definite plus if you're going to pursue a career in web development. As Angel! has already said getting your head around some of the popular scripts around the internet is a real bonus and will enable you to work on basically any system.

Wordpress if you're wanting to go down more brochure sites which can be a bit boring as they're mainly front end with little functionality. Systems like OpenCart (http://www.opencart.com/), Prestashop (http://www.prestashop.com/en/home) and Magento (http://magento.com/) are a lot more interesting and could lead to a career in ecommerce which is currently rapidly growing. I personally would suggest Magento but it's rather backwards but has been a great learning experience.

It'd be really beneficial as well to keep up to date with some of the "newer" development languages/tools such as Node.js, Symfony, Laravel.

Did you want to develop what you're doing into a career? There are loads of junior positions going around which could really benefit you. I got my current job through an apprenticeship and it's one of the most rewarding experiences I've had.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Dave Macaulay

[Script47]

Getting a good understand of OO PHP (http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/object-oriented-php-for-beginners--net-12762) is a definite plus if you're going to pursue a career in web development. As Angel! has already said getting your head around some of the popular scripts around the internet is a real bonus and will enable you to work on basically any system.

Wordpress if you're wanting to go down more brochure sites which can be a bit boring as they're mainly front end with little functionality. Systems like OpenCart (http://www.opencart.com/), Prestashop (http://www.prestashop.com/en/home) and Magento (http://magento.com/) are a lot more interesting and could lead to a career in ecommerce which is currently rapidly growing. I personally would suggest Magento but it's rather backwards but has been a great learning experience.

It'd be really beneficial as well to keep up to date with some of the "newer" development languages/tools such as Node.js, Symfony, Laravel.

Did you want to develop what you're doing into a career? There are loads of junior positions going around which could really benefit you. I got my current job through an apprenticeship and it's one of the most rewarding experiences I've had.

Thanks for the in-depth reply, and that tutsplus link was really helpful, just skimmed through, will hopefully go through it all soon. :)

[BlackScorp]

And once you learned the frameworks and shops and stuffs, then start to learn architectures, Data Context Interaction or Clean Code. The Goal of them is to Create undependant scripts. So once you learned it, it doesnt really matter anymore if you want to implement a feature into Magento or Wordpress or anything, you can even pick your plugins from Wordpress and reuse them in Magento.

Some links;)

http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean-architecture.html

[HazardBoy]

Like BlackScorp sad Architectures is a must!

If you want to work in a large company:

MVC, MVVM and MVP must mean something to you and you must have experience with at least one of them.

Work OOP along with collaboration tools. Do team work and start working on a portfolio were you can mention collab work.

Get certifications. Specially if you don't a have a degree in engineering/Info.

How well do you master JavaScript? Everything is drifting towards JavaScript as clients machines get more and more powerful.

Today big websites use PHP/.NET as service (back-end) and front is pure JavaScript with ajax.

If you thirst for more I recommend Node.js with express js, were you will write back-end and front-end with pure js.

Again you must be familiar with those terms:

Web performance.

PHP with 10.000 users.

SAAS

Apache and IIS.

Agile (SCRUM)

 

Depending on your age, you might want to consider starting an internship, this is a good way to enter a big company.

Make a linkedin account and make it your career journal. And sooner than you know it recruit companies will hunt you.

 

Good luck, and the enthusiasm may never fade you!

[Razor42]

My next steps working towards learning and using OOP and I am going to try create a small little simple project using it.

[BlackScorp]

My next steps working towards learning and using OOP and I am going to try create a small little simple project using it.

But be carefull OOP is not OOP. Usually you learn stuffs like Some base class will be extendet by specific classes. take a look at this talks

 

novadays many developers realized that extreme extending cause dependencies, if you change some base class, this changes will affect other classes, sometimes it is required but often you will get unexpected results. instead of extending use Dependency Injection, which just basicly means you put some classes from outside in your class.

also automated tests are important. for example you created a part of software and later someone else schould add some new features, well he could just hack some new features in your script, but how do he figure out if everything is working like expected?

he can either, klick through entire gui und fill your forms with different values and take a look if he see an expected result, or he can just run tests and will see directly errors.

also how could he know WHAT is the expected result if he is not familar with details of your software? again he can klick over gui but he is not able to understand if the result is like expected or not.

there are many PHP Developers out there which are self called "hacker" "scripter" they dont care about those things, once you care, you could call you proffessional or "developer".

Personally i learning tests and stuffs by my self, iam not a proffessional, but i want to be.

i started a personal Project to study this https://github.com/Opentribes/Core everyone can clone that project and try it out, run tests, modify things and so on. Maybe this can help you a little bit out if you have some referencens, feel free to make issues or ask why a specific thing in the code is made like it is, negative feedback is good to learn, many ppl just start to ignore negative feedback and listen only to the good ones. if you accept them, then you can learn.

just my 2ct