I say this often, and then regret my words days later, but I did not find this very difficult. PHP does not seem as bad as JavaScript and reminds me a lot of jQuery. Like these two languages, PHP seems easy to use  in the Codecademy setting. Again, like with jQuery and JavaScript lessons, putting the pieces together to create something more complex might be difficult. I imagine having the same issue, struggling to know where to start and how to put the many these we are learning together.

Now for some reason the jQuery and PHP lessons have been extremely buggy. It if had not been for the Q&A I would not have finished the lessons. This set did not have the same impending update warning like jQuery, so the bugs were unexpected and unexplained. I did, however, have to reload the page a few times to make the code work. Even after writing mine identically to the example or the hint, it would not work. Hopefully by next year, or the next time you are teaching this class, they will fix the bugs and cause their students less anxiety with unnecessary error messages. I also hope they add the button that gives the code so that we can see it and try to do it ourselves.

I did do something different this time around. I got the idea from the class forum while we all struggled with jQuery and the slideshow. Instead of just doing the lessons and hoping to remember them later, I began copying the notes and the correct code so I can reference it later. I’m not sure why it has taken so long to do this and I imagine the last few assignments could have been significantly easier if I had.  They will be great as a reference moving forward.