Shawn Stratton PHP Geek

Reading List for Aspiring PHP Developers

A few years ago I started buying tech books on every subject I had a remote interest in.  While I still have yet to read all the books I've had an interest in, I've read many specific to Web Development and I have some recommendations to those who are just starting out.  I'll break this down into sections, I'll be starting with Basic PHP & MySQL and then branch into specific subjects.  Reading these books will NOT make you a rockstar developer, but it wont hurt your ability to become one.  If this post turns out to be of value I may convert it to a Page at a later point, I'll also be linking to all of these via Amazon.

Getting Started -

• PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thompson (I started with the first edition of this book)
• HTML and CSS: The Good Parts by Ben Henick (because you can't get away from front-end development)
• JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford (awesome book for JS)

Advanced PHP -

These cover various topics, please pick and choose on what you feel you need to learn. Exceptions are starred and bolded

• Essential PHP Security by Chris Shiflett (A good primer on PHP Security)
• php|architect's Guide to Date and Time Programming by Derick Rethans (this has always been a difficult topic for me, Derick's book really helped)
• php|architect's Guide to Web Scraping by Matthew Turland (Awesome book talking about web scraping)
• * PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practices by Matt Zandstra (This is a must for any serious developer)
• You want to do what with PHP? by Kevin Schroeder (Good book on very advanced and low level Concepts, read with caution)

Front-End -

• HTML5: Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim
• High Performance Websites by Steve Souders (this book and the next will get you doing things right on your site for performance and caching)
• Even Faster Websites by Steve Souders

Database (MySQL) -

• MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide by Paul DuBois (very comprehensive book that actually reads as a much better manual)
• High Performance MySQL by Baron Schwartz (this covers a lot of good topics for most implemtations)
• SQL Antipatterns by Bill Karwin (sometimes it's easier to learn what not to do rather than what to do)

Database (Document/NoSQL) -

• Cassandra: The Definitive Guide by Eben Hewitt
• CouchDB: The Definitive Guide by J. Chris Anderson, Jan Lehnardt, Noah Slater
• MongoDB: The Definitive Guide by Kristina Chodorow & Michael Diroff

Operations -

• Web Operations: Keeping the Data On Time by John Allspaw and Jesse Robbins (this is an excellent read and covers a lot of interesting topics)
• Cloud Application Architectures by George Reese (have yet to find time to finish this but it gives a good overview of the EC2 stack)

Advanced Programing Topics -

• The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas (this is a must for everyone)
• Refactoring by Martin Fowler
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler (awesome patterns and ideology book)
• Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell
• Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans

Contributing to and/or Extending PHP

• C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie (Awesome book that will teach you enough C to be dangerous)
• Extending and Embedding PHP by Sara Golemon (Best Extension writing book out there, downside is it's a bit dated and the author has yet to do another edition)

That should be enough of a list to keep anyone busy reading for a few months (if not at least a year or so.)  By all means if you have a book you recommend, list it with the name of the author in the comments and give a short blurb about why.  I'll be watching the comments and I'll add in where applicable.