I thought all of Akash's suggestions were good but a little broad and seemed to involve a lot of reading. And while any budding developer will jump at the chance to expand their burgeoning technical library, I thought there were a couple of items we could add to his list.

The recommendations that made his list are

• Start a project that other people (developers and end users) will use.
• Learn another language.
• Teach someone PHP.
• Ask for suggestions not solutions.
• Use what you read.

I'm particularly a fan of the third one (teaching) - not only does it spread PHP out even more through the masses, but it can really test you on your knowledge (some of those "how do I.." questions can get a bit complex, even from beginners).

He (David) suggested that the format for teaching PHP needs to change and that these books need to start not by teaching PHP from the Web but by introducing newbies to PHP concepts by creating command-line applications. The idea being to introduce them early on to OOP and best practices, rather than trying to get them started fast with a simple "Hello, World" Web site.

For Ben, the idea was agreeable, but he wasn't sure on whether or not such an approach would take off with the current book market. He does agree with David, though, that things need to change.

As far as David, his thoughts can be best summed up with this post on his blog, talking about a way to learn PHP without some of the drudge they pass along with the lessons in some of the "Learn PHP Now!" kinds of books. He even includes a table of contents for such a book.

So, which is the better of the two? Well, book publishers still think the second (the give examples and teach practices too) is the proven formula for a good PHP book, but maybe a company out there could benefit from Ben and David's suggestion of a no-nonsense, clean, easy book that fosters an approach supporting the basics, not someone's opinion of good code.

Windows is making a strong play for the server market with their "Cross Training for Developers" program. And look at the co-sponsors: O'Reilly and Dr. Dobbs. Not too shabby.

Oh, and if you dig around on the site you will see tutorials on PHP, Java and Coldfusion. You will also see that if you sign up for three of their webcasts you will get a free copy of Visual Studio 2005, a free book and some other stuff that they don't tell you about. What better way to fend off the IBM/Eclipse onslaught than start giving away Studio. Whoever said Microsoft wasn't getting smarter with age was wrong.

It's an interesting tactic, and it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. So far, from what Marcus has said, it seems like a half-hearted effort - but that might just be because it's just getting the ball rolling.]]> Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:35:11 -0600