Wednesday, November 28. 2007
Dear Santa, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket and one of those . . .
I'm privileged in that I'm able to 'guide' the choice of some of the gifts I'm likely to receive over Christmas. Given the equally dire state of both my understanding of OOP and the programming sections of my local libraries I feel this is somewhere a good book could help.
From various places on the web I've found three books which may be helpful and would love to get some feedback from the PHP community.
For background, programming is not a full time activity for me and although I can easily knock up a custom cms I wouldn't describe myself as a seasoned pro. Also, although it has not always been the case, I almost work exclusively in PHP and expect this to be the case for the foreseeable future.
The Books
p.s. A cookie for anyone who can name the film I've paraphrased in the post title.
From various places on the web I've found three books which may be helpful and would love to get some feedback from the PHP community.
For background, programming is not a full time activity for me and although I can easily knock up a custom cms I wouldn't describe myself as a seasoned pro. Also, although it has not always been the case, I almost work exclusively in PHP and expect this to be the case for the foreseeable future.
The Books
PHP|architect's Guide to PHP Design Patterns by Jason E. Sweat.
From the reviews it looks like this one may go somewhat off-topic.
PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice by Matt Zandstra
The reviews seem positive. Probably the most likely candidate at this point.
The Object Oriented Thought Process (Developer's Library) by Matt Weisfeld
From the reviews it may be a too brief introduction.
Have you bought any of the three books above? How useful was it to you? Any other suggestions?
p.s. A cookie for anyone who can name the film I've paraphrased in the post title.
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Serenity is the movie, but I will admit I had to cheat a little.
I really enjoyed Zandstra's book. I've read parts of the php|arch book and wasn't as impressed with it, but I haven't bought it and read it so I couldn't give you a straight-up comparison.
Zandstra's book was the first book I read on "PHP5 OOP" and I would recommend it.
One thing to bear in mind though is that when you start talking about OOP and design patterns you move away from the objective "this is a variable; this is a loop" type of books, and head into the murky, subjective land of the author's opinion.
Take on board the author's ideas but don't get bogged down too much with the specifics.
One thing to bear in mind though is that when you start talking about OOP and design patterns you move away from the objective "this is a variable; this is a loop" type of books, and head into the murky, subjective land of the author's opinion.
Take on board the author's ideas but don't get bogged down too much with the specifics.
I agree with Richard about Zandstra's book and about the fact that you should use your own judgment when reading these kinds of books. Test some of theses ideas that interest you and see what works for you.
The other two books looks interesting, I might just ask the same thing from santa!
The other two books looks interesting, I might just ask the same thing from santa!
Thanks for all the feedback. It would seem a consensus is forming.
On a lighter note, the quote was indeed taken from Serenity.
On a lighter note, the quote was indeed taken from Serenity.
I've read the first two, never seen the last one. Both were pretty good introductions to the concepts of patterns/objects and how they are useful, but neither really went far enough to let me get traction with the topic. The Zandstra book was the more successful of the two. To really get into the topic, I had much better luck with O'Reilly's Head First Design Patterns, even though it was written around Java code examples. It has an unusual approach, but was much more successful at burning the concepts into to my fairly linear mind.
i did a review here: http://www.phpkitchen.com/index.php?/archives/711-PHP-5-Objects,-Patterns,-and-Practice.html
Jason's book is good if you're not sure how to implement Design Patterns in PHP. It does have some useful info in it and I occassionaly still refer to it when I'm looking for a pattern name. I read it as one of my first introductions to formal patterns and it definitely helped take code from theory and UML diagrams to real examples for me.
The Object-Oriented Thought Process, however, I would highly recommend if you're still new to OOP/OOD. It does seem short, but any longer and it would have moved to preachy in my opinion. That's my memory of it some 3 or 4 years removed though.
The other I haven't read, so I can't really compare it to these.
The Object-Oriented Thought Process, however, I would highly recommend if you're still new to OOP/OOD. It does seem short, but any longer and it would have moved to preachy in my opinion. That's my memory of it some 3 or 4 years removed though.
The other I haven't read, so I can't really compare it to these.
I'm coming in a little late, but Zandstra's book would probably be best. It's the only one I have of the three mentioned, but I've always been disappointed with php|arch's editing. Anyway, if you're looking for a good book that will teach you how to apply design patterns using PHP, Zandstra's book is great.
