This book was not proofread!!!

I'm a recent Comp Sci grad from University of Maryland, so I'm pretty well versed in lots of programming languages. I needed to learn PHP for an employer and I saw this book in borders. Out of all the books there, I liked this one the best because of the learning flow, and it had exercises for you to do on your own - something most php books don't have.

However, the good news ends right about there. I am just starting the 3rd chapter and I am CONVINCED THAT THERE IS NO WAY this book could have gone thru an editor. It seriously seems like it was just written and printed! This book gets 2 stars because:

1) Every code example I've done so far (about 4 in the 2nd chapter, WOULD NOT RUN, even though I copied and pasted straight from the book. I actually had to debug the book!!! The bugs were simple things too, like missing semicolons or concat (.) symbols. If I weren't already used to debugging, then I would've pulled my hair out trying to find out what's wrong.

2) The solutions to the questions at the end of the 2nd chapter use programming concepts that they didn't introduce yet! A forloop is used in the solution, but loops aren't covered until chapter 4! When I went back to check my answer I thought to myself, 'Are you kidding me?!'

Now, I usually don't write reviews on amazon, but I had to write one for this book. There must be MUCH BETTER books for php than this one. If you're paying this much money for something, you shouldn't have to settle for these kinds of problems. Do yourself a favor and buy ANY other book and make up your own test questions to solve. Thank God my employer paid for this and I didnt blow money on a book that wasn't edited at all.

Other Reviews

• Perfect book to start PHP
• Coding errors could be quite a pain for beginners!
• Helpful for the beginner, but watch out for typos
• This book was not proofread!!!
• Sloppy