Beginners First Prioject To Start?
 

Hi,

I am quite familiar with this community now, from the time I've been here so far. I've learned a lot of PHP since my existence here at Talk PHP, and so the reason of this post is that I am asking for help. I am very confused at the moment on what I would like to even start coding on. The project I am looking forward to completing is maybe something that will get me going with my own personal site maybe. I also was recommended by my friend that I fully learn linear programming first; instead of object oriented programming, so maybe that will give you a good idea on what I can start with.

Thanks for the help, need it anyways *!*.

There really is not much to procedural (which it is called, not linear) programming. You might as well start out with OOP, but please do make sure that you do learn the basic stuff first. But really that is up to you, just remember to move on from procedural programming in a near future.

As for a project to start on, you could try creating a blog. Or if you want to start out even simpler: A quote list, where people can - without logging in for the sake of simplicity - add quotes.

The only thing to be aware of if you start with OOP is that not everything needs to be done in OOP. There's many an example of applications where the programmer went off on an OOP binge and created unnecessary overhead with the sheer amount of objects being instantiated with no particular rhyme or reason.

It's healthy to understand the purpose and need for both styles - most major applications you will find use a healthy combination of the two. Some do it to provide procedural aliases to a wider range of object features, some do it because there's no need to build a class if all you're doing is some string manipulation, and so on.

A lot of people suggest blogs as starting points, and I understand why - a blog application can introduce you to no end of new problems and solutions. My only objection to that is the fact that it also starts you down the road of reinventing the wheel. Blog apps have been done, and are being done by large groups of experienced programmers.

On the flip side, doing something for the experience is perfectly fine, just try to remain aware of already present solutions.

My advice is to find a need, and fill it. What kind of features do you want on your site? What would snazzify what you already have? If you can't find a problem to solve, create one. If nothing else, open a blank file and just start writing and see what you can make it do.