For the last few months I've been spending my evenings typing like my fingers are on fire, dedicating some of my free time to a new side project. I'd like to introduce PHPandas. PHPandas is a book targetted at absolute beginners to development. It will help those who haven't written a line of code in their life to learn the ins and outs of the language, and to start building cool things.
(note: temp cover!)
Over the past few years I've discovered a love for educating beginners on technology. Code Bright (don't worry, still ongoing!) has been a fantastic experience, and I've been surprised at how fun writing multiple books has been. This is coming from a guy who despised writing anything in University.
The feedback and support that I've received from my Laravel books has been fantastic. It's wonderful to meet you all at conferences, and to hear about your learning experience. The books have sold over 7000 copies in total, and the majority of the feedback has been positive. I'm absolutely overwhelmed with that result. I'm pretty sure it's just because of the cover photos, though.
PHPandas will cover the basics of the language all the way through to object-oriented structures such as traits and classes. It will be targetted at PHP5.4 and above, to try and avoid the pitfalls of legacy PHP, and to embrace some of the newer features. (Short array syntax, hurrah!)
The book will be written in my typical, friendly, slightly goofy style (It's all I know), and will sadly not feature the story headers that Code Bright has. Chapters are short and sweet, but descriptive. The idea is to give everything you need to get crafting code snippets, and later applications. This will let curiosity fuel your education within the later chapters. It's fun to be writing about the language that I love working with.
I don't have a roadmap for future titles, but I'd love for PHPandas to become a series. Beginning with a Volume 1 (syntax / language primer), followed by more of an application cookbook / greater introduction to object-oriented design volume, and finally a design pattern / tips and tricks volume. The idea is you can build your skillset slowly, and it also makes the writing a little less daunting (yay for me), and easier to track progress.
I understand that most of my followers (fanbase sounds terrible) are mid-to-experienced PHP developers, but I'd love to expand on this to work with absolute beginners to development. Hey, it might sell zero copies, but it's been fun anyway! For this reason, I'd appreciate if you'd share this post with any beginners that you may be acquainted with.
PHPandas will be available in a number of languages, with the translation process once again managed by my buddy Antonio Laguna. If you'd like to get involved, then please be sure to let him know.
I'd say I've written around 60% of the book. For that reason, I'll likely be completing this book before it's release. That doesn't mean that I won't be adding to it, though. I'd love if you gave feedback on what you think is missing, and hope that it can evolve over time to become the most useful resource for learning the PHP language.
I'm currently estimating the release date for the book to be the end of July '14. I haven't given a lot of thought as to the price, but it will likely cost less than Code Bright.
Thanks for reading, and...
LIVE LONG AND PANDA!