Originally Posted by Wildhoney

Don't worry about it being in the wrong section I don't personally believe that books are the best thing for a beginner to programming, but that could well be based on the knowledge of my own learning processes. I always do better to find a documentation on the programming language, such as PHP.net's: date() and sprintf(), for instance. Then think of something to code. My first PHP application was a PasteBin type of application. That helped me figure out all the basics of PHP, and then I read up what I needed to know to further my application! The only PHP book I have is an advanced PHP book, and that's only because such techniques are difficult to find on the internet.