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[nycphp-talk] if you were teaching PHP...

David Mintz dmintz at davidmintz.org
Mon Jan 17 17:34:27 EST 2005


Thanks Mitch, points well taken. My thinking was, this is PHP and MySQL is
immensely popular, so let's show them one native PHP MySQL API and let's
show them PEAR. There isn't time to get into both mysql_xxxx and
mysqli_xxx, so I have to choose one. The former is of course still widely
used, but the latter is the way of the future, or so I assume.

Of course, I try mightily to teach them principles, terminology and
self-teaching skills such as RTFM, so they should be reasonably prepared
to self-teach whatever we don't get into.

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005, Mitch Pirtle wrote:

> Depends on where you want your students to be at the end of the
> course. Do you want them to be limited to writing native mysqli calls,
> or have an understanding of how to use whatever database was
> available?
>
> If the course is on php development, then you should show them how to
> write database independent code, and then show what the cons/pros are
> of writing the apps with the native libraries instead.
>
> I mean, it is easy to understand how to work with native libraries,
> but the more abstract nuances of using classes is always better
> explained in the flesh, no? Database abstraction is a perfect scenario
> to illustrate the benefits of an OO-based approach.
---
David Mintz
http://davidmintz.org/

"Don't let the liberal media tell you what to think
and feel. If you have hatred in your heart, let it out."

   -- Clayton Bigsby, black white supremacist



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