Re: [PHP] Best open source project/framework to support a php training course?

On Wed, September 27, 2006 4:25 am, Pinocchio007 wrote:
is simple: which project/framework to choose in order to bring the
current
"best practice" to our students, and prepare them for the future. Not
being
a professional PHP developer myself, I would appreciate any
recommendation.
Which OS project would you include? Which framework? And why?

Here is what I would suggest:

Instead of flooding a single project with 20 potentially uninterested
students, give the students a handful of projects to choose from, or
even a large list, or even just let them pick *any* existing PHP
project from sourceforge or any other semi-reputable source.

The productivity of an Open Source developer, even a student trying to
get a grade, is a whole lot higher when they picked a project that
interested them in the first place, instead of just being assigned to
it.

They may not get "best practices" -- But they'll sure get "real-world"
:-)

But perhaps they could even end up being the one to bring "best
practices" *TO* the project. Which will teach them more? Watching a
project already doing "best practices" or pushing a project to the
next level by implementing your instruction to bring "best practices"
to the table?

One other suggestion:
For the advanced class, suggest that they could also work on the PHP
source itself, rather than a PHP application.

Or, perhaps, by that point, they'd be more interested in working on
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ming, or any of a couple hundred extensions in
PECL.

At this point, they'd be actually writing C code, but so what? :-)

They'll learn a heck of a lot more about how PHP really works that
way, that's for sure.

PS
If you don't know the history of PHP, you should ask Ze'ev and Andi
(aka Zend) how they got involved in PHP. It is incredibly relevant to
this question/answer provided above, and well worth your time.

If you're lucky, maybe YOUR students can get sucked into a wildly
successful OSS project, and end up with an honorary degree because
they were too busy "doing" instead of studying. :-)

--
Like Music?
http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm
.

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