I am wondering how much time would somebody need to learn PHP programming language from scratch, without knowing any programming language. Let's suppose that person would be full time devoted (10 hours per day, 30 days per month) and he/she is very good at logical thinking and in math. The question is how much time to reach a level when he/she can develop own dating site or let's say car auction site. Thank you
10 hours per day? Maybe 2 days for the core basics, and then you always keep expanding your knowledge. No one knows ALL of PHP. As for a dating site or auction site, maybe 2 weeks at 10 hours.
In hindsight, I would say it was about a year before I had truely functional working knowledge of PHP. This was after about a years worth of Javascript and HTML experience, and I was 22 or 23 when I started. I was working out of my math teachers college math book and getting a C average when I was in 9th grade.
If you already know programming in any other language, it is going to take only an hour to learn PHP. You can learn the basics from w3schools quickly. All the Best.
If you are new, you may also try going in for asp.net ... You can set up a dynamic website in minutes using asp.net ...
What kind of auction site? How advanced of a site are you looking for? I'm sure you could put up a reasonably basic php auction site in a couple of weeks... there's loads of tutorials online and it's not terribly difficult.
If you had no fundamental base in any language, I'd say for you to become competent it could take a year or more to be able to code without looking to your references for the function name every line.
It depends on the person, if you really like it and you have at least some experience about programming you can develop something in a couple of months. 3-6 months. But you will not learn the tricks until you develop some sites. You can even create a working script in 1 month but it will be unpolished. If you already know some basics I would suggest learning Object Oriente Programmin... then you can do some stuff.
Id say you need to figure out the amount you can handle per day. For me it's about 4 hours a day of pure study, after that if I try to learn more, I go blank and next day i'm worn out and don't want to sit down and learn. So i think it's important you maintain a steady good pace that's just right for you and go from there. Don't rush ahead of yourself or you will probably drive yourself away from programming (i'v done that several times). Dedicate yourself to learning and depending on the type of person you are, you could learn php fairly well within a few months time.
10 Hours is a bit, excessive... I've been programming php for 3 years, an average of 2 hours a day. And yes, sod ASP.net
If your goal is simply to write some simple web applications (a small dating site, a car auction site) in the smallest amount of time possible, I'd give a chance to Ruby on Rails. Being this a PHP forum, I know I'll be stoned for this advice, but if you are a complete beginner to programming and you don't have problems of hosting, I think that this framework, written in Ruby, may be your best shot. It supports scaffolding (ie. generating parts of the site) and has a very simple to use ORM (ActiveRecord), that will exempt you from writing SQL queries too. Said this, with a past experience in Java, JavaScript, a bit of C and C++, writing a simple PHP application for the first time took me a week or two.. due to the syntax very similar to the previous languages I already knew, my only concern was to find out how the functions I knew from, let's say, Java, were called here. Remember, though, that to write the kind of applications you want, you'll need to learn some SQL too, and that the first times you write in PHP, your code will be, with every probability, a mess... some languages encourage you to write beautiful code, some others encourage ugly code: PHP probably belongs to the latter category. Said this, since someone here might misunderstand me, I've been writing PHP code for two years and atm it's my language of choice for web applications.
I've got to second lordofthelake. PHP is easy to learn if you come from a programming background but it's not pretty. Only in PHP 5 where you can write nice OO applications are my scripts starting to look a little nicer. I'm not sure how using a framework like cake or RoR is going to help a newbie though. If anything they add a lot more complexity and learning curve to someone just starting out in server side programming.
When I advocated the use of RoR, it was because it hides most of the complexity behind a nice and simple syntax... you don't need to write any SQL, don't need to run any preg on the forms to validate them, IMO it simplifies the work a lot. Or at least simplified my work a lot when I developed a web application with it (it was the time of RoR 1.3, I think). But, while RoR tends to simplify the work (you don't even need to fully understand the syntax you're using, up to a certain extent and for sure you don't need to be a Ruby expert), I find the PHP frameworks rather ugly and over-verbose in comparison. It is maybe because they are modeled on RoR, but have the limitations of PHP? Maybe, the only PHP framework I appreciate is CodeIgniter, that seems the only truly PHP-based framework. The others seem to suffer from the RoR-syndrome, badly imitating the Ruby flexible syntax. But, of course, these are only my 2 cents (and we're going a bit OT, too).
php is a fairly easy language to learn, so if someone with your 'specs' were to start from scratch it all depends on what they're reading.. for the type of projects you want to do, they'd need knowledge of modularization techniques (splitting up the application into code files) and at least a rudimentary coding-standard. Plz dont pick one with massive comment blocks that spit out unnecessary/redundant details, but rather pick descriptive (long) variable names and explain in comments why you chose this/that approach for tackling the problem within the module/function. The long var names get shortened automatically by a compression/obfusication tool that you can plug in later. Since the target audience is good with math i highly recommend this book. Really a must-have, although it doesn't use php syntax. It's a book to zen on. To build what you want, they'd also need to know a fair bit of javascript and sql. Get them a beginner and intermediate book on SQL, may be mysql-based. Javascript development can these days be eased by using a javascript base library like jQuery(.com) or MooTools, etc. During the first 1 to 3 weeks i'd let them download and play with: adodb, smarty, jquery. They need to learn how to work with the 200.000+ free libraries out there, to cut development time by about 70%, AND end up with a more manageable set of code for any medium-to-large-sized application. Install FireFox 3 + Firebug, Opera, Safari. Using FireFox+Firebug is imo the easiest way to develop a site, but you have to test every few days in IE, Opera and Safari. That way no crippling cross-browsing bugs creep into your app. Also during those first 3 weeks, i'd have 'm start on a basic design for the first pages to construct of the application. Require the learner to make backups 2x a day, one around noon and one before going to sleep. Use subdirectories labeled like '2008-mm-dd 14-00-00' to place their backups in. Better yet; get them a version control system. Especially if there's more than 1 learner at work. And dont forget to backup the repository of the version control system! I also recommend of those 10 hrs you let the learner zen/rest/google-for-security&gimp-tutorials for at least 3.5hrs; programming & learning it is very brain-intensive and requires zen moments (up to 30 minutes in length). Rushed code is crappy code. You could also hire an experienced programmer to oversee the project, design the code architecture, and dish out smaller assignments to the learning webdevelopers. You get a much better architecture (than the organically evolving one that learners would put out in their first 2 years), and the learners can ask their senior for help. All that said, it would take 'm about 2 to 6 months to create an database-drive application site.