The CodeUtopia blog asks the online community for their opinion - what do you think of PHP as a first language?

Sometimes I've seen people say PHP is a bad first language, because it teaches bad programming habits. But is this actually true at all? Often those who say that don't really like PHP themselves either, many times because of equally untrue reasons.

They argue both sides of the situation, mentioning what could make for a good first language, why PHP is a "nearly perfect" fit for it and some arguing points for the other side as to why PHP isn't the best option.

David Goodwin has posted a book review of a book put out by Packt Publishing, "Object Oriented Programming with PHP5" (from Hasin Hayder).

After an email out of the blue from someone at Packt publishing, here's a review of "Object-Orientated Programming with PHP5" I don't think I've done a book review before, so apologies in advance if it's not structured in any logical manner.

He's broken it up into a few lists to make it very straight forward and easy to see if it's the book for you - the pros, the cons, the contents of the book and a random code sample (this one showing the Decorator pattern in action).