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PHP Building Websites with PHP Slim Basics & Twig Templates Installing The Slim Framework

Matthew Notter
Matthew Notter
5,335 Points
Posted by Matthew Notter
Matthew Notter
5,335 Points

Why do I need to learn composer and slim framework, when I'm most focused on learning PHP through this website?

I'm just not sure why I'm required to learn these different applications in the PHP track list, when I feel like I should be learning PHP in a greater depth.

I can understand the uses of these softwares, but shouldn't I be learning these further down the road, as a way to increase my productivity?

It almost feels like 'composer' is sponsoring teamtreehouse and paying them to include their work in the track.

Manish Giri
Manish Giri
16,266 Points
Manish Giri
Manish Giri
16,266 Points

I also feel the same way. While I admit that new features like PSR, Composer etc make PHP a worthy competitor to other frameworks like Rails, Django, Flask and so on, but throwing these features at us just like that, without even covering the basics of how PHP is used to make websites - is simply weird.

We've barely crossed even 20-30 lines of PHP code so far in a single application, so I just don't see the point of introducing these "new" features just yet.

2 Answers

Alexander Costa
Alexander Costa
11,464 Points
Alexander Costa
Alexander Costa
11,464 Points

Its good to get a grasp on a MVC early especially when dealing with all the routing that comes with OOP.

Ted Sumner
PLUS
Ted Sumner
Courses Plus Student 17,967 Points
Ted Sumner
Ted Sumner
Courses Plus Student 17,967 Points

I believe the course you are taking has a misleading name. I suggest you take this track as a beginning point on learning PHP. If you do not want to take the track, then these courses in this order is probably better than the Slim course.

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/php-basics http://teamtreehouse.com/library/php-functions-2 http://teamtreehouse.com/library/build-a-simple-php-application http://teamtreehouse.com/library/enhancing-a-simple-php-application http://teamtreehouse.com/library/database-foundations http://teamtreehouse.com/library/using-php-with-mysql

I did not take this course until after all of the above and I still had to rewatch several videos and really study the code to solve some problems to make it work right.

Manish Giri
Manish Giri
16,266 Points
Manish Giri
Manish Giri
16,266 Points

Hi Ted - I am on the track which you linked to. I followed all the parts in it(How to make a website -> PHP basics -> PHP functions -> OO PHP basics -> Building websites with PHP) in order. When I arrived on the last part, I got stumped - with all the things about Composer, etc involved in it. So I didn't really understand what you meant by "take the track as a beginning point".The other parts in the course (Database foundations -> PHP and PDO -> Console -> Git) all come after this part on slim, composer.

I'll follow the other library courses you linked to and come back to the crazy section.

Aamnah Akram
Aamnah Akram
17,549 Points
Aamnah Akram
Aamnah Akram
17,549 Points

I agree with the course having a misleading name. It could have been named Modern PHP Workflow or something..