I already knew a boatload of perl - I used it all the time as a sysadmin. It was what I wrote CGIs in, using CGI.pm. I already knew Apache, I was maintaining it on the machines at my office. PHP I had to learn from scratch, while mason, embperl already had a perl touch to them, so those were able to be learned quickly. What was really helpful though was having everything in one small space so I wasn't running around to a billion websites trying to figure out the pros and cons of them manually. I didn't have time to do everythin from scratch, it was just all presented right there for you.
As to the disbelief that I did well on the interview, I'm still happily and gainfully employed with a very large e-commerce firm developing for their main page, not some backwater thing. My years as a sysadmin were very helpful in getting the position, actualy.
I've got a copy of this LAMP book, as well as three other books they suggested, here on my desk. When I have a problem, I usually turn to the LAMP book first, and sometimes to the more detailed language specific ones when there's a piece that isn't covered in the LAMP book because it's too detailed.
I was applying for a web development position. I'd had CGI under my belt for ages (I still have a copy
of the original NCSA web server running on one of my machines for grins) but never really got into the
other languages and way of writing dynamic code. When I lost my job as a sys admin, I wasn't able to
find any "honest" work in that field, so I thought I might need to fall back on my historic web development
skills.
In the store one day I was looking for a good book to get me up to speed on all the languages I'd
been thumbing my nose at all this time. I came across OSWD w/LAMP, and flipping through it
could tell it was just what I needed. When I noticed that it was by one of the guys who wrote
Hacking Linux Exposed I knew that not only would it be useful in helping me do dynamic
websites, but it would contain the security pointers I'd need to be able to do so in a secure manner.
Ironically, the day I bought it, a company scheduled an interview for me for a web development position
the following day. So I read the entire book, cover to cover, in one night without the chance to
actually try out the code. Nonetheless, I learned so much just from reading it without even typing
a line of code that I totally smoked the interview. The interview was very technical, asking differences
between the languages and pros/cons, as well as having me write code off the top of my head to do
things in the different languages.
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As to the disbelief that I did well on the interview, I'm still happily and gainfully employed with a very large e-commerce firm developing for their main page, not some backwater thing. My years as a sysadmin were very helpful in getting the position, actualy.
I've got a copy of this LAMP book, as well as three other books they suggested, here on my desk. When I have a problem, I usually turn to the LAMP book first, and sometimes to the more detailed language specific ones when there's a piece that isn't covered in the LAMP book because it's too detailed.
In the store one day I was looking for a good book to get me up to speed on all the languages I'd been thumbing my nose at all this time. I came across OSWD w/LAMP, and flipping through it could tell it was just what I needed. When I noticed that it was by one of the guys who wrote Hacking Linux Exposed I knew that not only would it be useful in helping me do dynamic websites, but it would contain the security pointers I'd need to be able to do so in a secure manner.
Ironically, the day I bought it, a company scheduled an interview for me for a web development position the following day. So I read the entire book, cover to cover, in one night without the chance to actually try out the code. Nonetheless, I learned so much just from reading it without even typing a line of code that I totally smoked the interview. The interview was very technical, asking differences between the languages and pros/cons, as well as having me write code off the top of my head to do things in the different languages.
I can't recommend this book enough.