Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 06:05:33PM -0500, PJ wrote:
>
>> Paul M Foster wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Thanks Paul for the explanation. It really does help and iis much
>> appreciated.
>>
>> I must respond to your chastisement of me, because i believe you may not
>> be aware of the fact that most books on programming really suck. I have
>> had my taste of enough of them to not bother. The kinds of things that I
>> am trying to do just cannot be learned from a book or from most of those
>> "tutorials" one finds on the Internet.
>
> How do you think *I* learned this? Back in 1974, when I hooked up my
> high school teletype via an acoustic modem to the school district
> mainframe and logged in for the first time, I had one choice for
> programming languages: Mainframe (Dartmouth) BASIC. So I bought a book
> on the subject, still in print today, called "Basic Basic". Thus I
> learned Pascal (Turbo Pascal). Thus I learned C (Kernighan and Richie).
> Thus I learned Linux (man pages). Thus I learned Perl, Python and PHP.
> *All* from books. I didn't have anyone to ask. Even when I got a job as
> FoxPro programmer, I had only FoxPro books to tell me what to do. If I'd
> pestered the other coders by asking them questions about how to do
> things all the time, they would have fired me on the spot. I benefitted
> there from having programmed in other languages before. FoxPro was
> then just another language.
>
> The only disadvantage to my approach is that I sometimes wonder if,
> having learned all this stuff in a virtual "vacuum", everyone else knows
> a better way than me. But my experience has been that that is
> infrequently the case.
>
> Yes, programming books *can* suck. And most assume you know more than
> you do.
>
> I benefit because I programmed in C before I programmed in PHP, which is
> virtually C for the web. And my C benefitted from knowing Pascal before
> that and BASIC before that. Multi-dimensional arrays are part and parcel
> of Pascal and C. So encountering them in PHP was no big deal. Syntax
> varies from language to language (in Python, you don't do $arr[] =
> 'blah'; you do arr.append('blah')), but the concept is the same. Once
> you know the concept well, the syntax is relatively simple to learn,
> unless you're trying to learn Scheme or something (;-}).
>
>> They are either moronically
>> basic of sadly flawed or outdated. It's something like the
>> do-it-yourself-wikis... any dolt can put of whatever they think.
>> That's the downside of the net, of course. The upside is that there are
>> great people, like yourself and a number of other who have been very
>> helpful and who are willing to share their knowledge.
>> Anyway, I find very little in the tutorials on the web that goes beyond
>> total basics.
>
> You're not looking hard enough. I've found help with a great many
> esoteric ("edge case") problems by searching on the net. You can't just
> decide "Well, all the books suck and the net sucks, so I'll just ask
> someone who knows." That's why they write books. So people don't have to
> use up all the time of people who know, by asking them masses of
> questions. The people who know are busy producing products. Professors
> and teachers get paid to teach people things, not productive
> professionals in a field. You're lucky the professionals are willing to
> spare the (free) time to explain what already plainly exists in books.
> "Learning PHP5" is a crappy little O'Reilly book for anyone who's
> programmed in another language and wants to learn PHP. But it's
> perfectly fine for a non-programmer learning PHP.
>
> Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against you personally. And I'm more
> than willing to share my knowledge with others in general. I allows me
> to clarify my concepts and gives others an opportunity to dispute what
> I'm saying. And of course, it helps others get it, when I know it's
> sometimes hard to figure out a way through. But I've done enough years
> of tech support and instruction to recognize the symptoms I'm seeing
> here.
>
> I'll let other people hold your hand from now on. And when they get
> enough of it, they'll chastise you as well.
>
>
> Paul
I understand what you are sayig and I am quite impressed with your
knowledge and experience.
Just to justify my position and by the way before I forget I hope that
there will be others who will benefit from my frustrations as some of
the help I have received has been quite high level and that, obviously,
I did not find on the web.
As to intensifying my search on the web, well, little by little I
stumble onto some stuff that is helpful but the amount of time I spend
looking and thinking is beyond normal human endurance. And the rewards
from searching are extremely minimal.
Where can you find the kind of stuff that you and Jim Lucas have offered
is not to be found easily if at all on the web. And don't forget how
miserable searching has become on Google. The others, I don't even
consider and don't have the time.
I'll try harder to understand the array but there is a lot that simply
is not clear...
I keep analyzing the different arrays I have and looking at the displays
on screen and there is little that is very clear. Anyway....
Just a little side note re books... on the side of cooking....
Most cook books are made by either some housewife with a frying pan and
a stove or some celebrity chef who either know little about being a chef
or doesn't want you to be able to cook as well as he. For instance,
there is 1 chef who is really, really great and has not had the media
exposure of many "greats" for various circumstances I won't go into...
but Michel Kerever has written one of the few books where is recipes
work for real... it's 600 pages with no photos. I know it works for my
wife has checked it and believe me "she knows".
Anyway, nice taalking with you... I see you're not that much younger
than I... heh... heh... heh... ;-)
--
unheralded genius: "A clean desk is the sign of a dull mind. "
-------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Jourdan --- pj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.ptahhotep.com
http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php
--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
