Andrea Tarr’s book “PHP and MySQL 24-Hour Trainer” is a great educational tool for anyone who wants to learn how to work with PHP and MySQL. If you believe that programming books are generally dry, convoluted and hard to understand, you will be very pleasantly surprised by the neat, well-structured, and accessible way this book deals with its subject matter.
Andrea Tarr is a veteran programming professional who has been in the trade for close to 30 years. She has a Master’s Degree in Information Technology and was the first person to write and introduce a computerized library circulation system in the state of New Hampshire. She is also known as the author of Joomla’s accessible administrator template, Hathor, and she is the tech editor behind the following popular Joomla! books: Joomla! 24-Hour Trainer, Joomla! Programming, and Joomla! Templates. Today Andrea divides her time between building custom websites, website templates, and extensions, and volunteering with the Joomla! Bug Squad. She is also a member of the Joomla Production Leadership Team.
“PHP and MySQL 24-Hour Trainer” does a very good job at taking its novice users by the hand and guiding them through a clearly defined, well-rounded learning experience that aims at giving practical, hands-on knowledge that can be used time and time again without fail.
The book starts at level zero, i.e. the assumption is that the reader has no knowledge or understanding of PHP, MySQL, and the notion of programming as a whole. Then it introduces the reader to the programming server environment and text editor needed to get the process started, and gradually progresses to unveiling the more complex elements that have to be learned throughout the course of the book.
“PHP and MySQL 24-Hour Trainer” is 479 pages long. It has 31 chapters or lessons, grouped around six main sections:
Every chapter has a clearly defined goal for the reader. The study material provides the theoretical background for achieving that goal, while the practice portion gives the novice user the opportunity to engage in a do-it-yourself exercise and solidify their newly acquired programming skills.
PHP and MySQL 24-Hour Trainer is published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. It is available to the general public via wrox.com (paperback), barnesandnoble.com (paperback and nookbook), and amazon.com (paperback and kindle).
We are pleased to announce that the author of the book was kind enough to provide the Joomla! Community Magazine with a copy of her book, which we would like to give away for free to one of our readers. If you would like to participate, please comment after the article, offering three suggestions on how to help make Joomla more popular. The JCM team will select the user who offered the most interesting, unique suggestions and will announce the winner at the end of the article on June 20th, 2012.
Addendum: The winner of the book is Aaron! Congratulations, Aaron, we hope you enjoy it! A big thank you to all of the others who also posted great and interesting answers! Thank you for your support!
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