Best PHP/MySQL books for a beginner?

Man, I never understood the hype behind RoR. Way too complex (reminds me of ASP--ugh) and it has no use compared to the PHP and Perl I am able to do already for my applications. That and it's not supported on most hosting I've found before, so there's more marks against it for me~

Anyways, as far as PHP goes I have not really found any books helpful in teaching it to me, as the documentation available here covers anything you would need to know about any function available under it--granted, this doesn't cover theory or anything, but they've got some really nifty bits of code too.

The one PHP book I have is PHP In a Nutshell, though it's a reference, so you can understand it's not full of tutorials by any stretch of the mind. Of course, I still reccomend you buy it if you're wanting to learn PHP. At $18, it's a steal.

For MySQL, a book from the same series comes to mind--MySQL In a Nutshell. Same applies as to what I said about the PHP book above (it's a reference), but the index is better and it taught me a lot more than the PHP book did. And for around ten bucks (used copy), it was well worth the investment~

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Eleo

PHP wasn't created with the goal of being the backend of massive web applications. It sort of grew into that. I use PHP for small things on my pages but would never try to script a forum in PHP.

And for me that's what it comes down to. I would never suggest PHP to anyone who intends on making a large web application. I don't know anything about ASP except that it exists, so I can't really compare Rails to ASP but something tells me that they're hardly similar. Ruby itself is growing quickly in popularity.

To each his or her own, then. I've written rather large applications in PHP without any hint of a problem before, and it was easier than anything like ASP (which I hate) or like RoR appears to be--even Perl.

Originally Posted by Eleo

Also, Dreamhost supports Rails. I wouldn't suggest another host to anyone for any type of website. 1 TB of bandwidth for $10/mo = win. You should already be hosted by Dreamhost!

I hate Dreamhost so much. First, I'd never use 1 TB of bandwidth. Second, all the specs tripling/quadrupling every few months is kind of disturbing. Third, I know of a great deal of sites hosted by Dreamhost, and all of them are down about 60% of the time. See my problem with them? It might be ISP, but if I can't talk to them I disapprove of their hosting, even if it is not their fault. I personally use Surpass, and it's been absolutely perfect.

There's nowhere I can't reach.