So you want to be a PHP Developer? • Hacker News Board

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#31

Post by troels » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:35 AM UTC

dutchbrit wrote: post #5

I wouldn't recommend Zend (I find it rather resource heavy) - but rather Laravel or Symphony, CodeIgniter is also nice and extremely easy to learn - probably the lowest entry level that I can think of, but 2.0 is taking it's sweet time to come along so that's a huge downside, plus, Ellislab wants to sell the project... Regarding CMS work, I have personally found that Magento is one of the best things to specialise in…

Resource heavy? That's not the problem with ZF. The problem with ZF is that is was designed by committee. And it is built in a very class-centric style. Symfony also has a much larger community around it.

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#32

Post by shire » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:36 AM UTC

is it easy to find job in the PHP world? and does it even pay good comparing to other languages like Ruby or Python

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#33

Post by chx » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:38 AM UTC

Drupal: Pros:

Low Learning Curve Cons:

Oversaturated Job Market

I will be the first to admit that Drupal does not have a low learning curve. (And you can blame me for some of that. Or a lot of that if you wish :P)

But oversaturated job market?? There has been a shortage of good developers ever since there was such a thing as Drupal-developer-as-a-job, at least a decade.

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#34

Post by coffeecheque » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:38 AM UTC

Does anyone have any good "tick-offs" that you'd ideally have to meet before you could be classified as a PHP Dev?

I had a look at the Zend certification link, and I know most of things on the list. It was surprising, because I wouldn't classify myself as a "dev" or anything even close to it. I learnt (and use) PHP via the "hack and see" method.

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#35

Post by imaginenore » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:39 AM UTC

Drupal absolutely does NOT have a low learning curve. If you want to do anything beyond a basic configuration blog-style site, good luck finding developers who know how to deal with Drupal's internals, especially in the last version.

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#36

Post by leorocky » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:39 AM UTC

A big suggestion missing here is a CS degree. I like Steve Yegge's take on it[1]:

> The best tip is: go get a computer science degree. The more computer science you have, the better. You don't have to have a CS degree, but it helps. It doesn't have to be an advanced degree, but that helps too.

My own take on it is that most programming languages are like cars and the skill of driving computer science: if you can drive one car, you can learn to drive the other and with programming if you can program in one language you can probably program in the other. Knowing the fundamentals about computers, how information is represented as bits, how they store and process information, how they communicate over networks, how you can use them to solve problems like sorting, cache invalidation, etc is really important stuff that is orthogonal to learning a programming language. Personally if I am using programming language X at my job, and you have 0 experience with it, but are a good programmer, I may not give a shit and hire you anyways.

[1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.de/2008/03/get-that-job-at-googl...

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#37

Post by jammycakes » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:40 AM UTC

ZoFreX wrote: post #30

If you're going down the Drupal route you're just as likely to need Drupal 6 - one of the challenges in this market is there is a lot of legacy work to be done, so you often have to know two or three versions of the framework. In the "Unicorn skills" section, you're as likely to need cPanel or Plesk as pure Linux skills (although having the latter will make the former much easier). I would also say you'll probably be…

> I would also say you'll probably be using SVN and not git.

According to http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/php.do these are the number of PHP jobs asking for Git and Subversion respectively in the UK in the past six months:

Git: 2244 jobs Subversion: 1559 jobs

So no, you're actually more likely to be asked for Git than SVN.

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#38

Post by stephenr » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:40 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #15

"PHP-elitist" is an oxymoron, right? Like a dumpster-foodie or an instant-coffee aficionado?

Stating that disliking/hating the mess that is wordpress makes someone an elitist is stupid and sounds like an apologist to me.

Would you call someone a ruby elitist because they embraced best practices and disliked/hated a project that refuses to embrace best practices and encourages bad practices?

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#39

Post by imaginenore » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:41 AM UTC

shire wrote: post #32

is it easy to find job in the PHP world? and does it even pay good comparing to other languages like Ruby or Python

Yes, pretty easy.

Re: So you want to be a PHP Developer?

#40

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 8:42 AM UTC

leorocky wrote: post #36

A big suggestion missing here is a CS degree. I like Steve Yegge's take on it[1]: > The best tip is: go get a computer science degree. The more computer science you have, the better. You don't have to have a CS degree, but it helps. It doesn't have to be an advanced degree, but that helps too. My own take on it is that most programming languages are like cars and the skill of driving computer science: if you can driv…

[deleted]