PHP Help

philologos · 13-03-2013 12:20am

threein99 wrote: »

Im not expecting anyone to do my work for me, we started learning php in January, a month after we were giving the brief for our project, our lecturer is the most incompetent educator I have ever had the misfortune of being taught by, there are close to 100 people doing this assignment and everyone has said the same,there have been numerous complaints to the head of the department. I am perfectly aware that learning by doing is the best way to learn a language, but we have literally no notes on the topic, no grounding, we were not taught the basics. This year alone we have been shown, javascript, my sql, and now php, and you can stick java onto that lot as well.

Javascript, MYSQL, PHP and Java isn't that much to ask you to learn in a university level computer science course.

Why should you expect to be taught every single detail by the by? Out of most of the stuff I have learned about programming, most of it has been self-taught in my own time, not taught in the classroom.

You've had a month to look into these concepts. People on this forum are more than happy to help you, but I have to say the moaning doesn't help really. There are plenty of tutorials online that go through basic concepts of session management, databases, pagination, AJAX, JQuery, SQL querying and so on online.

philologos · 13-03-2013 12:24am

threein99 wrote: »

One of the lads in the class had that real_escape in his code but it wasn't working so he asked that lecturer why it wasn't and she had no idea what it was. What are our fees being used on ? if the lecturers dont even understand the language

Personally I think if web development is being taught, I think it is better that you understand the principles rather than the language that the principles are being explained with.

Part of being a good developer is that you know about the high level concepts such as headers, session management as a means of dealing with HTTP's stateless nature, POST and GET requests, serialization techniques like JSON / SOAP-XML and are able to think logically about applying them irrespective of what programming language you are introduced to.

Understanding how this stuff works, will be a good help to you.

As for stuff about syntax and particular functions in the PHP stack just ask rather than moaning and I'll be more than happy to point you in the right direction.

threein99 · 13-03-2013 12:25am

philologos wrote: »

Javascript, MYSQL, PHP and Java isn't that much to ask you to learn in a university level computer science course.

Why should you expect to be taught every single detail by the by? Out of most of the stuff I have learned about programming, most of it has been self-taught in my own time, not taught in the classroom.

You've had a month to look into these concepts. People on this forum are more than happy to help you, but I have to say the moaning doesn't help really. There are plenty of tutorials online that go through basic concepts of session management, databases, pagination, AJAX, JQuery, SQL querying and so on online.

I never said I expected to be taught every single detail of the language, the basics would be nice, and maybe a lecturer who can help out and explain things when we get stuck, surely for €2500 in fees for the course that's not too much to ask. Would you accept a driving instructor who didnt really know how to drive ? As I said I know good educators from bad ones,

philologos · 13-03-2013 12:29am

threein99 wrote: »

I never said I expected to be taught every single detail of the language, the basics would be nice, and maybe a lecturer who can help out and explain things when we get stuck, surely for €2500 in fees for the course that's not too much to ask. Would you accept a driving instructor who didnt really know how to drive ? As I said I know good educators from bad ones,

€2,500 is a drop in the water in comparison to what many others have to pay, just to tell you

That said, if you want to grow as a developer, spend some time researching and thinking this through and you'll be able to do it, I guarantee you.

If you have a bad lecturer, that's unfortunate but you still have to deal with the situation.

threein99 · 13-03-2013 12:34am

philologos wrote: »

€2,500 is a drop in the water in comparison to what many others have to pay, just to tell you

That said, if you want to grow as a developer, spend some time researching and thinking this through and you'll be able to do it, I guarantee you.

If you have a bad lecturer, that's unfortunate but you still have to deal with the situation.

I still think €2500 should at least mean lecturers know the topic, I know I might sound like Im moaning for the sake of it but believe me I am not. There loads of tutorials online but a lot of them are hard to follow and we dont use AJAX,or JQUERY. I'm at my wits end with this project, all my other subjects are suffering as a result

ironclaw · 13-03-2013 10:00am

threein99 wrote: »

I still think €2500 should at least mean lecturers know the topic, I know I might sound like Im moaning for the sake of it but believe me I am not. There loads of tutorials online but a lot of them are hard to follow and we dont use AJAX,or JQUERY. I'm at my wits end with this project, all my other subjects are suffering as a result

Hate to tell you, but some courses in Oracle (And the likes) can cost upwards of €6k (And more) just to sit the exam. And I agree lecturers should know but many don't. And thats life. You need to just get on with it and make your best bet. I've self learned nearly every language I have. Few books, bit of StackOverflow and I'm actually making money doing it. I'd say I've spent a fraction of €2500 on my development learning. And yes, I do go to college as well.

One of the lads in the class had that real_escape in his code but it wasn't working so he asked that lecturer why it wasn't and she had no idea what it was

Thats probably due to how he's connecting. Note carefully the 'i' in the following statements. You need to use SQLi. You can't mix and match. PHP has about 4 different ways of interfacing with SQL but most are being depreciated. SQLi is the newest one and worth learning from the offset as its PHP5. In fact if you shouldn't really be using anything else.

$link = mysqli_connect("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world");

$var1 = mysqli_real_escape_string($link, $var1);

If you need some help or have errors, send me a PM and I'd be happy to help if I can.

threein99 · 13-03-2013 10:12am

ironclaw wrote: »
Hate to tell you, but some courses in Oracle (And the likes) can cost upwards of €6k (And more) just to sit the exam. And I agree lecturers should know but many don't. And thats life. You need to just get on with it and make your best bet. I've self learned nearly every language I have. Few books, bit of StackOverflow and I'm actually making money doing it. I'd say I've spent a fraction of €2500 on my development learning. And yes, I do go to college as well.

Thats probably due to how he's connecting. Note carefully the 'i' in the following statements. You need to use SQLi. You can't mix and match. PHP has about 4 different ways of interfacing with SQL but most are being depreciated. SQLi is the newest one and worth learning from the offset as its PHP5. In fact if you shouldn't really be using anything else.

$link = mysqli_connect("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world");

$var1 = mysqli_real_escape_string($link, $var1);
If you need some help or have errors, send me a PM and I'd be happy to help if I can.

Cheers, I will be spending my summer programming to make sure we don't end up in this situation again next year.

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