Women in Technology

There's something odd (it seems to me) in Chapter 12 about database access patterns. I have trouble seeing the fundamental difference between the Active Record and the Integrated Mapper pattern examples. Maybe I'm just dense.

Otherwise, yes, this is truly an extraordinary PHP book. For me in particular -- at the risk of sounding melodramatic -- it could be life-changing. As a self-taught demigeek with a perfectly respectable non-tech day job, I develop in PHP primarily for fun and only secondarily for profit. I wrote a very substantial PHP/MySQL app for use in my place of employment and have since learned so much, although my app works (yay!), it also sucks (disorganized, spaghetti)and I want to rewrite it from the ground up. But the challenges and complexities are considerable. Now comes "Advanced PHP Programmng" to save the day. It is exactly what I need.