I’ve recently started coding with PHP5 after reading the excellent book PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice by Matt Zandstra. The book is excellent for someone new or intermediate to patterns and object oriented programming. The advantage here is that Matt uses real-world examples although simplified to demonstrate the point, and even includes a few UML diagrams to really drive it home.
I’m happy to have a lot of the brain work done for me in PHP5, although having been a Perl programmer for some years now, I think they both have their place.
My humble opinion is that php5 is much better for web-based apps, while Perl is excellent on the command-line.
Here’s the php article that got me started on this post.
On a side note, a really good book I’ve peeked at is Fast Track UML 2.0 by Kendall Scott.
