To become a Master

[Nieth]

Heyo, I've been fishing around Mysidia for a while now, putting a site up and down constantly due to my complete novice status as a programmer.

I know very little if almost nothing at all about programming, but I'dlike to try and learn PHP, so I'm reaching out to the community here for any advice, reference material, tips or tricks that helped them get started or get to where they are now.

My problem is that I'm always intimidated about starting something new but if I can find out how someone else was able to build their skills, I can usually do so myself. I'm a quick learner and am very adaptive/adept at something when I have a passion or drive to do so and I'm definitely driven to learn PHP.

[IntoRain]

That's a hard question. People have different methods of learning, it really depends on what you enjoy. The first thing I programmed that taught me something (actually made me work, study and enjoy) was a sliding puzzle (ASCII, no graphics). Previously I had done some exercises (small exercises involving math formulas and strings - basically how everyone starts) to get used to the basics.

I do not know how to get started in a web language. What we had to do in a class for web (in php) was very boring and all around sending forms, showing the result of a form and making login/logout forms. I got used to mysidia and php because after learning a C-like programming language with OOP concepts you pick up all others quite fast.
Maybe watching youtube tutorials (the quick 10minutelong each video ones, not the 5 hour each video ones) and trying to build a site you like (or even trying to mod mysidia's script meanwhile, little things) would help you, since it's web you really want. And maybe follow HoF's tutorials here as well.

And don't worry, I couldn't start programming anything useful for a year and a half! lol It's very easy to just quit when things go wrong or the result isn't as expected, but if you try hard to solve a bug it will make you feel wonderful and ready for more! Even now, I feel it's very stressing and it still intimidates me, but you feel really accomplished when it works.

[squiggler]

You might try http://www.codeacademy.com.

[IntoRain]

And for videos, there's also Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/courses/Techno...free&view=grid (there are many php ones there)
This seems pretty complete: https://www.udemy.com/php-mysql-tutorial/ and this one https://www.udemy.com/introduction-t...aining-course/ seems very basic

Keep in mind that Codeacademy babysits you through every step, even basic things you should have learned previously. It tells you what you have to do exactly, whether you understand why it is like that or not, when in programming there's no single way of doing something. Most people like it for the motivational speech and pretty interface and I think it's great for people to figure out if they actually like coding. It's also great to learn basics. But sometimes you might think you are learning, when you actually aren't memorizing anything, so be careful with that.
After going through OOP concepts, open mysidia's script and try to mod something you want (something simple). IMO, trying to do something you want to do is the best way to learn and memorize concepts for life.

[Nieth]

Thanks a lot for all of the input. I'm in the process of doing all of the codecademy lessons, and they are pretty step-by-step. I'm glad that I'm learning the functions but I'm not exactly learning any practical uses.

Its good for now, since I have absolutely no coding background with any language. After I'm done with these I'll focus on the other suggestions, I've also picked up some PHP books along with some other networking stuff including MySQL, Javascript, HTML and CSS.