The finest schools and best programming books in the world offer a plethora of information
about how to string bits of code together into elegant applications and
programs. They discuss grand theories of operation, talk about design patterns on a
conceptual and enterprise-level field, and teach us the syntax, idiosyncrasies and, in
the case of PHP, some of the odd and unusual design choices made by the language
creators.
But they do not teach us how to program.
There is a distinct and unusual disconnect between the science of application development
and the art of application development. Fresh graduates from the finest
computer science courses have no idea how a development shop actually works,
froma practical standpoint. And those who pick up programming to solve a particular
problem, much like I did, do not have much of a guidepost when it comes to how
programming is done in the real world.
This book hopes to help answer some of those questions. It is designed not as
a book about the ins and outs of writing code, but about the details and concepts
critical to working with a team, working within a software development company,
and strategies for building winning applications.
Throughout the book important concepts are discussed: refactoring, test-driven
development, bug tracking and debugging. We also focus on some PHP-specific
concepts, fromseveral “worst practices” to caching for web applications and web application
performance. Finally, the book concludes with a chapter on how to make
developers happier at what they do.
This book, written for beginners and old hands alike, is designed to approach the
development of PHP applications in a new way. It focuses on the tips and tricks of development, not necessarily the particular code snippets that make up a software
application. It is designed to be used as a reference guide, rather than as a novel or
other technical book. It does not build on itself; each chapter stands alone, though
taken together they form a complete understanding of modern development in the
PHP economy.