What to do?
By now we know a single quarter in PHP (and likely any programmming system) is a not sufficient to let us produce whatever we imagine. However, we know a few things and know where to get more and likely just need a pointer or two in the right direction.
Keep Busy!
Now that you know how time consuming programming can be, let it! Always be involved actively in some project. The more different projects (over time) the better as more projects makes more bullet points on the resume!
Sign Up for the PHP User Group
There is a PHP User group that meets practically across the street from the school. Signup to come to PHP meetup monthly events, get involved in study groups and learn about projects and PHP jobs & employment: The Seattle PHP Meetup Group
Video Tutorials
Early in the quarter we viewed some excellent PHP tutorials. Remember you can view all of these and lots more at Lynda.com
There are also lots of youtube and nettuts PHP videos as well!
More PHP Classes
Consider taking additional classes at Seattle Central. For PHP, it would be the ITC216 and then the ITC281 and in that order, if time & funds allow. The 216 further cements PHP fundamentals with programmatic conundrums and the 281 has you build an object oriented PHP web application from scratch, plus adds special topics database backup, re-writing URLs and integrating a search engine.
For database classes, the ITC222, is a great class, but probably requires at least the ITC220 before that. Remember that the database is the engine in our car, and it's at least that important!
Books
There are lots of great books out there. Go to Barnes & Noble one day (alone, or you'll only get a few minutes) buy a coffee and look through a couple stacks of books. Look up complicated issues in the index and see how they are addressed. Here are few books that may be of interest right away:
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Now that you're done with our class, you're more ready for this book. Larry is a 'do it yourself' kind of guy and good at explaining, which is just what we want! Compare some of the things Larry does to what we do in ITC280.
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Another great book by the author of our class book. I would read this after the Ullman book above!
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MySQL, Second Edition by Larry E. Ullman
This is a great book for learning more about database design and how to work with the internals of MySQL for web development. All of the books by Larry Ullman are practical and clearly written.
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The best book I know for explaining the fundamentals. Forget the server side code however (Java). Once you read this book for fundamentals, go directly to the following AJAX/PHP book below. Incidentally, don't pay more than a dollar for this book. (It's worth at least twice as much!!)
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To make any use of AJAX we need both server (PHP) & client (JavaScript/AJAX) examples. This book delivers that are both useful and instructional! I would study the above book, Foundations Of AJAX before I tackled this, however.
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