One of the things I hear from people and my friends is questions about the best way to work with PHP. They always want to know how to get started on a project, what software to use, how to plan it successfully, and so on. In this article I plan on revealing the “magical secrets” about how I do my PHP programming so quickly with so few bugs.
No matter what level of programmer you are, a newbie just starting, or a war-battered veteran of php3, the most useful thing you can have at your side is a downloaded copy of the PHP documentation. I keep it on my quicklauch bar, if that means anything about how useful it is. No joke, it’s right there with my browser, and that’s all that’s on there. I’ll show you a screenshot if you don’t believe me. Even though I’ve been programming PHP for about five or six years now, I don’t know how I’d get by without my trusty CHM PHP manual.
And last but not least. Bigger isn’t always better. Stick close to what you planned on making. Don’t go overboard with useless features that usually slow down parse time and development time for something that one percent of your users will use. Get your project done and working then implement those things later. After all, nothing really shows what is needed in a project than the use of it.
And always remember, when a person tells you there’s a bug in your script, happily inform them that “my code doesn’t contain bugs, it just randomly generates new features” then quickly fix the problem before they go back to see if it actually is some kind of odd feature. Good luck, and please, never use Microsoft Word to generate HTML.
