Posted by mkmagu on November 8, 2011 at 8:55am
I was saw on the O'Reilly site that they have a online certificate program with the University of Illinois and was wondering if it would be worth taking. It's not cheap and before shelling out the $$ I wanted to see what others might thing of the
course. Any feed back would be great.
http://www.oreillyschool.com/certificates/php-sql-programming.php
Thanks
Mary
Comments
Although I think that all
Although I think that all learning is helpful, I am not sure that php/mysql courses are the best bang for your buck. If you understand programming at a high level and are comfortable with "if" and "foreach" statements, arrays and booleans, you already know enough to theme and write modules in Drupal. The reason I say that is because Drupal has MANY of its own functions that you need to use that you will never learn in a generic php/mysql class. Additionally, how Drupal interacts with the database layer is VERY different (from a syntax perspective). So, if you already get php/mysql at a high level, I recommend learning Drupal specific functions/syntax. You should focus on Drupal Hooks and Preprocess functions! Those will get you farther... We can go over some of those this week at the meetup too :)
Michelle Lauer
michellelauer.com
For those intending to do
For those intending to do more in-depth programming or engineering, Drupal or otherwise, a background in programming/engineering principles is valuable. Once you are grounded in those principles, it becomes easy to pick up new technologies. Remember PHP, MySQL, Drupal, etc. are just tools. Several years ago you may not have been using them -- several years from now you may not either. Things can and do change quickly and you want to be able to adapt when that happens.
I do think that it makes sense for someone developing Drupal modules to have database knowledge, in particular if you are working on modules that have complex schema designs. An awareness of what are indexes, keys, normalization, etc. When you create a Drupal module that involves modifications to the database, such as storing your module's data in new tables, you are doing database design, and it is just as easy to do it wrong (and impact site performance, etc.) if you do not understand what you are doing. Again here Drupal, and by extension MySQL/PgSQL/SQL Lite/etc. are just the tools, the function calls to set up the schema are the language, but the underlying structure is important and so is understanding what it is you are doing by making those calls.
Drupal is interesting because it allows people from a variety of backgrounds to build a variety of sites with it. You can work with it and almost never touch code. You can work with it and almost never do much with PHP. You can work with it and never interface with the database. You can also engineer some pretty complicated and complex projects with it. So the answer to your question again depends greatly on what you intend to do. But taking a quick look I'd say there is a decent chance that course would give you the background to do some of these things. It should also help you understand better what you are seeing when you are looking at code examples in Drupal, and what the hook system is actually doing as opposed to just learning this hook or that one.
You can learn these things on your own too if you are disciplined, but often it helps to have the structure that a designed course provides -- so it will depend on how you best learn as to which route you should take. Anyway -- just some thoughts, hope it helps.
O'Reilly online certificate
I'm too new to Drupal to comment on this particular certificate's relevance to Drupal development but I can comment on the Oreilly/U. of Ill online programs as I'm enrolled in their Web Programming certificate program.
As you indicate, it isn't cheap but it's a lot cheaper than online classes I've taken before. The sandbox they have you work in is well designed and the instructors are very quick to respond to questions. I wasn't thrilled with their choice of supporting books but since I have an O'Reilly Safari account, it didn't impact me negatively.
Overall, I think their program is well done.
-Kevin
Thanks for everyone's feed
Thanks for everyone's feed back. I do have a question for you Kevin am I right in assuming the course is not designed around the book that comes with the course? It's just an added material regarding the topic of the course.
thanks
Mary
Mary M.
PHP and SQL in Drupal
I'd echo what Miche said. I was just at a quick lesson in drupal interaction with the database in Boston last week. I was shocked. The best way to write SQL statements in modules is not to write SQL at all. In fact, you don't even use the basic PHP db interaction functions. Drupal has re-invented the whole interface and provided functions that only look vaguely familiar, even to someone who has spent many years writing SQL and PHP. The reason for this is so that other areas of Drupal can communicate with your module. A little knowledge of these are definitely helpful, but if you're going use it for drupal, mastering these languages is overkill and probably a waste of time and money. There are probably much cheaper and quicker ways to pick up enough so that you can dive right into learning the Drupal APIs. I can show you one at the meeting.
www.EcoBoro.com
me too, me too. This is stuff
me too, me too. This is stuff I've been wanting to learn, but just haven't know where or how to dive in.
Roger
_________________
Art has gone to the dogs
GoodeGallery.com
O'Reilly Book Choice
The books O'Reilly sent for my classes didn't seem to be chosen by any other criteria other than having a particular course's focus in the title. For instance, they sent me a pocket PHP guide for the PHP course. The book isn't useless but, it's hardly supporting material for an entire class. O'Reilly may be assuming, rightly, that there is plenty of material online and that it would be difficult to pick a recently published, comprehensive text for whenever a student signed up but, at the same time, this is exactly what online college instructors usually do. For me, it's hardly a deal-breaker because the courses are pretty self-contained in the online interface and my instructors, so far, have been easy to get in touch with.
I have to say, though, it seems an odd practice for a publisher who, I would think, would be using this relationship with U. of Ill. to sell more books (though I could be completely off track as happens often enough)
I wanted to thank everyone
I wanted to thank everyone for their input both on line and at the meeting Thursday night. I did a little more digging on certifications and found that W3schools also has one for a lot less money. I also realize it may also not be worth more than the paper it’s printed on. I did find that UConn also has a cert program and I’m waiting to hear more on it. I think at this point in time I’m going to go with just reading a few good books and practice the code.
Mary M.
W3Schools
W3schools has a good general reputation as a source for info. It's an extension of the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C). They are the ones that determine standards for all the web technologies (HTML5, CSS, http, etal.) I don't have any experience with the Certificates and whether they are valuable or not to employers. But the organization that backs them is the definitive org for all things web and I would certainly give a +1 to anyone I was considering hiring.
Also, the next BostonPHP Job Fair has been scheduled for March 21. http://www.meetup.com/bostonphp/events/40721672/
Roger, if you're still interested in the BostonPHP Percolate Certificate, it starts up a new season in January. I'm going to join to brush up, since I haven't coded in a while, and I'm thinking of implementing something similar for the Definite Guide to Drupal 7 website. You can find a Session Master List here, where you can check out how the course is going and see if it fits your needs.
www.EcoBoro.com
w3schools != w3c
Just to clarify, the w3schools has nothing to do with the w3c: http://w3fools.com/
Thanks for the correction
Thanks, Damien.
Apparently I got duped along with all the others. Thanks for correcting my misconception. I like your link. It had a list of more reputable learning tools.
Your resident W3Fool,
Boz
www.EcoBoro.com