Learning PHP Design Patterns

Chapter 1. PHP and Object-Oriented Programming

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

—Victor Hugo

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

—Phillips Brooks

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

—Andrew Carnegie

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

—William Shakespeare

Entering into Intermediate and Advanced Programming

When we first learn to read, the stories, vocabularies, and words tend to be small and simple. Dealing with small and simple stories requires small and simple tools. However, when we are more advanced and introduced to the works of William Shakespeare, we need a more complex, larger, and more sophisticated toolset. If a kindergarten teacher handed her brood Hamlet, chances are the kids wouldn’t understand it, but if they are given an incremental set of reading tools over the years, by the time they reach high school, they can read, understand, and appreciate Hamlet. This book is for developers who are ready to read the PHP version of Hamlet.

To get what you need from this book, you need to begin with an understanding of and experience with PHP. Other books in this series, Learning PHP 5 by David Sklar and Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, 2nd Edition, by Robin Nixon (O’Reilly) are good places to start if you have no PHP experience. Of course, you may have learned PHP from any ...