learning php at the local library
A couple of months ago I was looking into PHP courses for this year starting in September. I couldn’t find much except for short intensive courses that lasted 4 days and cost around £1500 or so. That was beyond my budget and probably designed for people who already have experience in other programming languages, which I don’t. I also imagine that those courses are paid by companies for their employees.
Then I found another course which was more what I was looking for. It was part-time for two years and as well as PHP included things like Javascript, XML and MySQL. All things that I want to learn at some point as they all go together. But there were parts of the course that seemed pretty simple and which I knew already. So it made me wonder what I was looking for in a course. All that I know about web design I have learned from books and online, so why was I looking for a course now?
I realised that what I wanted was a learning environment and some structured learning time. And that was it really. If I could go somewhere with my laptop and my tutor book for a couple of hours each week, that would do the job. So I came up with the idea of the local library. It’s within 5 minutes walk and it has wi-fi, which I don’t even need if I work on my local server.
It’s been two weeks now and I’m doing pretty well. Unlike being at home I have no distractions. For those two hours I focus entirely on what I’m there to do. It’s quiet and everyone else there is studying too. So now it’s every Saturday morning and in a couple of months I’ll be at the end of the book. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to get all the way to the end of a tutor book before, so that would be a real achievement.
Sometimes the answer is right under your nose 