The time has come for me to relearn PHP. When I last used PHP, in 2005, I was using PHP 4.4, which had pretty poor support for classes and objects. Compared to Perl, I found PHP pretty awkward.
PHP 5 is supposed to provide much better support for object orientation. Exploring the books that are now available for learning PHP, I see many touting PHP 6, although PHP 6 seems to be vapor since it still hasn’t been released. (Apparently, incorporating complete Unicode support into PHP has turned out to be too difficult.)
Anyway, I’m going to learn enough about PHP 5 to be able to create classes and objects. The first book I’ve chosen to work with is PHP in Action: Objects, Design, Agility, by Dagfinn Reiersol, Marcus Baker, and Chris Shiflett. It looks like this book will teach my how to use modern object-oriented techniques for Perl 5.
From the first chapter, I note the following topics that I plan to follow up on as I continue reading the book:
- Agile methodologies
- Object orientation combined with simplicity
- Decoupling
- Design patterns
- Test-driven development (using PHPUnit and SimpleTest)
The authors mention two other books I plan to read when I find the time, Refactoring, by Fowler, and Test-Driven Development by Example, by Kent Beck.
