How to increase my “advanced” knowledge of PHP further? (quickly) [closed]

Answer 1

"my own library of functions" == "a [idiosyncratic and probably sucky] framework".

I recommend learning Symfony because the developers seem to consistently strive to do everything according to "best" practices ... but you could probably learn a lot from any of the popular frameworks.

Don't write your own framework. Please.

Answer 2

The approach to look at at other programmers code is definitely a good way to learn "good" or "bad" practices. After reading other code you develop a "feeling" for good code.

I definitely recommend Frameworks like Zend Framework, symfony, CakePHP or Agavi because a lot of contributors look at that code and develop them constantly towards the "ideal" solution (which of course will never be reached...) ;) You still can make the decision developing your own classes instead the ones the framework offers...

With such a long PHP background you could consider contributing to an open source framework. Discussions with other developers bring you forward in a faster way.

Showing your code to others and ask for constructive feedback has the same effect. You never know how good you are until you benchmark your skills with others. Always in a constructive manner. This would be a natural process when contributing to an open source framework. ;)

Answer 3

Learn to do what you already know ... in a different way. Examples:

• in a different language
• on a different platform
• in parallel/distributed
• through a framework (yes, you decided that they "aren't for you" - maybe try a different one, they are sometimes very different from each other)

Answer 4

I would join discussion boards and try to solve other peoples problems. Sometimes there are quite challenging questions that force you to do some research. If you can't answer it, you can wait for someone who can and learn something then.

As for frameworks, learn from them. I roll my own too, since most of the frameworks out there can be rather slow. Although fast enough for most of the websites out there.

I would also recommend looking at Facebook's PHP library. They do some interesting stuff in there.

Answer 5

You could ask your company if they could pay you a Zend PHP certification exam. Studying for this exam would oblige you to know PHP well and to train by reading a lot of the documentation, the Zend study guide, and also by training with mock exams. It's a very efficient way of improving, and it looks quite good on a résumé.

Answer 6

Everyone who wants to be a PHP programmer, always takes only the first word and completely ignores the second.

While "programming" is WAY more important than "PHP", to be a PHP professional, one should be a programmer in the first place.

So, I'd vote for the last one - reading books. Not on PHP, but on the programming in general. Grady Booch's, Martin Fowler's and even the old Donald Knuth's ones.
It would be also be nice to take a look at some other languages, like Java or Python. Not to switch to them, but to learn from them.