Learning PHP was interesting. I’ll echo a lot of my other classmates in saying I did realize it was a bit repetitive at times. And although I initially thought the work put into executing simple equation solutions was worth far less than the effort, when I take into account the mass production aspect of PHP, I’m more understanding.

The first meaningful tool I acknowledged though the lessons (taking them consecutively) was the strlen function to split strings into a more digestible and readable format.

For the language and technical definitions, I think the single section explaining the basics was helpful in the Objects lesson. Classes define how objects behave (and don’t have data). Objects have data. Members are variables that belong to an object, while methods are functions that belong to an object with access to its members. And constructors are methods that are executed when an object is created.

What I’m still a little fuzzy on is the concept of inheritance and private and public functions. I was able to complete the lesson, but it’s not as clear, getting to the final product without having to walk step-by-step with corrections, as I want it to be.

I’m really interested in seeing other ways PHP is used — both within the realm of this class and out of curiosity for possible future endeavors. Again, the example with the phonebook was an eyeopener as to how mass, large tasks could be done with PHP functions.

I was also wondering why, although PHP includes Javascript, HTML and PHP code, it’s free software. I was dong a bit of research and found certain licensing options, and I also found that earlier this month (Feb. 6) there was a new stable release for version 7.3.2 (not entirely sure what other functionality is involved in the latest version). But why’d the three (I believe) originators of what’s now common use PHP write a general purpose scripting language without having at continuous licensing (or at least a one time purchase) associated with its usage? I presume the more I learn about PHP’s capabilities, the more I’ll know why it could possibly for the pure benefit of fellow programmers not bound by a profit driven model.

I think the most recent lesson was really helpful for tackling areas where we were getting stuck when working the slider. The video recording of the lesson addresses all of my questions, many of which I didn’t know how to ask online.