NYCPHP Meetup

[Mitch Pirtle]

Brian O'Connor wrote:

>Hi I've been working with PHP now for close to 7 months now, and I
>feel the biggest obstacle for furthering my knowledge is lack of
>projects / sites to create.  I've already worked with MySQL a lot, a
>little bit of PEAR, and worked a bit with OOP.  I was wondering if
>anyone had any suggestions for projects that I do, or a strategy that
>I can use to learn different styles of php.  Thanks.
>  
>

You know what I think would give you the most inspiration?  Pick 
something you are very interested in, and build an application to help 
you organize your information.  So if you like food, build a recipe 
website, if you are into football, then build a sports portal.  More 
important than the purpose of the tool, make sure you:

* use a distributed version control system (cvs, subversion)
* use existing classes for common tasks (ADOdb, PEAR, jpgraph, etc.)
* include multilingual support (a.k.a. "i18n")
* separate code into separate scripts not just for function, but to 
support multiple developers
* include XML-RPC to support external, non-PHP clients

These will go a long way getting you into the right frame of mind to 
write really exceptional code, and also accommodate other interested 
parties on the Internet - as well as have some room for expansion.  You 
will be simply amazed at how great it feels when you start something 
that takes on a life of its own, and you will learn a great deal more 
from that experience than you ever could by just writing an academic 
exercise.

-- Mitch