NYCPHP Meetup

[B.A.S.]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to move from being a rank beginner to an intermediate level 
of programming PHP. While practicing & trying to learn something new 
every day, I'm also reading up on security (Essential PHP Security by 
O'Reilly & Pro PHP Security by Apress).

Unfortunately, I still have a really tough time trying to work out the 
logic of what I want a script to do, and my code is pretty primitive & 
verbose because of that (I have to painstakingly step through each 
little bit of logic in order to wrap my head around anything).

What I should be doing to get to the next level? Should I read up on web 
application design? OOP? Just keep plugging away? What do you guys use 
when working out the logic of an application you're building? I'm 
guessing that would be some kind of flow chart?

What about IDEs? Because of my HTML coding & graphic design background, 
I'm still using Dreamweaver--would I perhaps learn faster or be more 
productive using Zend Studio (or even something less expensive like 
phpDesigner)?

Please forgive the numerous questions, but I'm 40+ years old and want to 
approach this professionally, not just be some hack who writes sloppy 
code for for beer & pizza money and doesn't care about the client.

TIA,
Bev