[chrismeller]

I love PHP, it was my first “real” programming language, and I’m glad there are still people trying to make it easier to adopt.

Having skimmed through several of these chapters, though, I just feel like it’s too similar to the official PHP docs, even down to the TOC.

Wouldn’t it have been better for everyone to put this effort into improving the docs, rather than developing yet another book in a silo that likely won’t have the longevity we’d like?

[restoreddev]

I started with foundational concepts which will overlap some with the official docs. The advantage of my site is I wanted it to be more readable, since the official docs can be hard to navigate. In the future, I want to cover topics like Composer and Slim which would not be appropriate for PHP.net.

[chrismeller]

That’s cool and does give the comprehensive approach some credence, but still feels like duplicated effort and the potential for outdated content (on both sides).

FWIW, I don’t think giving a more readable aspect to the official docs would be bad. It’s already got way more of that feel than it did in PHP 4, when it had more of an MSDN auto-generated parameter documentation feel. With the clear sections and code snippets I think both could be achieved with little extra effort.

[thanatropism]

Imagine this kind of reception for any other content. Someone spends a year into composing a new symphony and the reviews go "I love live music but wouldn't it have been better if the composer would have re-orchestrated a familiar classic rather than developing a whole new score that won't be performed as often as we'd like?"

[jabberthemutt]

That analogy makes no sense.

[h8hawk]

Are there other technical reason's for advocating it, other than your love because it was your first "real" language?

[wolco]

I can't find a better language to use in 2019 in the backend if you are developing a website.

Is there a better language built for rapid web application development. You could debate which is better rails/laravel but in 2019 I would learn php.

You may suggest Go, python, .net, node, Perl or java. They could be used but each only offers an advantage in certain situations and make development slower or have another disadvantage.

If you want to make a website using php is the simplest easiest fastest choice available.

[h8hawk]

Thank you. I've looked for this sort of explanation.

[hrktb]

I think it’s still one of the pragmatic language around.

The ‘quick and very dirty’ parts are still there, the ‘clean and efficients’ bits have been added, and there’s a ton of still runnable doc and code lying around.

All of that is a blessing and a curse of course, but I think that makes it a unique proposition.