As a hobbyist programmer and aspiring professional, I give this book a provisional 5 stars. 1 year ago, knew nothing about programming. Absolutely nothing. I then began my membership at teamtreehouse.com and have been using faithfully since then for anywhere between 2-5 hours a day. I am now conversational in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL and can use each with intermediate proficiency. All of that before reading this book.
Note first of all that every learning environment has its positives and negatives. Many will read this book and think it's the greatest of all time. Others will not. As well, books like this become obsolete virtually upon publication. That does not render all of its contents useless or out of date. The edition I read was revised in May 2018, so it was as up to date as can be expected.
REVIEW:
The book touches virtually everything you need to begin creating web pages. Front-end (client-side) programming and back-end (server side) programming are covered in enough detail and with enough examples for you to be able at least to copy the examples, understand them, and reproduce them on your own machine.
The book begins with PHP fundamentals. If you have previous programming knowledge (of any true programming language), this part will be quite rudimentary (the same goes when you make it to JavaScript). Then the author transitions to MySQL and how PHP interacts with databases. From the beginning the author supposes that you are going to follow along as a means of internalizing the material. If you are already familiar with the material and are just strengthening your foundation, there is probably no reason for you to do every example. I only did one or two examples the book. The end of the book covers front-end development (JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3). Along with these, the author includes jQuery and jQuery mobile. Because so many tools are taught in this book, each one is necessarily limited in its scope. However, each topic is covered with a surprising amount of detail and clarity.
After doing PHP at teamtreehouse.com, I knew the basics of the language but was more confused than ever on how to apply this knowledge to building an actual program. This book helped me to get the wheels turning and build a web app that handles and manipulates databases, handles login credentials, and displays data to a webpage. It helped me solidify what I had learned. The fundaments were repetitive, yes. But the examples and explanations went far beyond what I had previously learned.
READ THIS CAREFULLY: You will not master any web language after reading this book. You will not get a web dev job simply because you read this book. You will not be able to design a web ready application after reading this book.
ALSO READ THIS CAREFULLY: You will definitely have the skills you need to progress to the next level and *begin* writing simple web apps. You will know the fundamental of handling data, you'll be able to use JavaScript to manipulate web pages, and you'll be able to style pages according to your liking.
A WORD OF ADVICE: If you're new to web and web design, start in the back with HTML and CSS. Learn to build static pages with simple designs before you attempt JavaScript and PHP.
All in all , this book is not for everyone, but if you use it well, it can be a great resource.
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