Book Review: CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development

I was recently asked to review Packt Publishing’s new book, CodeIgniter 1.7: Professional Development, by fellow CodeIgniter community member, Adam Griffiths. Adam is a well-known developer in the CI community, who, despite his young age, has become well-known among the ranks of  CodeIgniter developers with his open source contributions.

I’m always excited to see new CodeIgniter books published, as the framework is growing in popularity and credibility among PHP developers, with applications springing up across the Internet. The framework is known for its excellent user guide and a strong community backing. But sometimes the resources available aren’t quite enough to make the concepts click in a new developer’s mind.

For me, the process involved viewing some of the available screencasts and looking at code that other had written in their applications. It wasn’t hard, but Adam’s new book would have been helpful to me in those early days of development with CodeIgniter. A selection of other CI-focused books have been published in the past, but I haven’t found many to be as practical as Adam’s. In previous books, often a single sample project is selected and used throughout the book to explain all of the concepts.

Adam’s approach is quite different and takes a look at various pieces of functionality that application developers might find very useful, while not walking them through the entire process of building an example application.

Specifically, Adam’s examples of using Twitter and Facebook authentication as well as accessing RESTful web services prove very useful, as these functions are increasingly at the core of many applications being built today.

The book also spends a bit of time talking about the basics of style in PHP coding. A guide like this would have helped to alleviate the evolution of coding style I’ve experienced as I’ve spent more and more time building web applications. It provides a solid baseline, referencing the CodeIgniter documentation’s style guide as a resource for maintaining code consistency.

Overall, I think that CodeIgniter 1.7: Professional Development fills a void in the market for CodeIgniter resources. I’d certainly recommend it to someone just starting out with the framework as an additional resource to use alongside the various other community resources.

The new book is not without its flaws though. As good as it is at helping a new developer get started at building all parts of an application: models, views, controllers and libraries, the one piece that’s lacking is advice on how to integrate with other people’s code. There a wealth of pre-written code out there, which though it may not be built to work with CodeIgniter, can save developers a ton of time as they build applications—if they know how to properly connect with third-party libraries from within the CodeIgniter framework. It can be a little bit tricky at first, so a primer in that area would be ideal.

Additionally, opening up the book with a bit of prior PHP experience is advised. Sometimes the examples don’t fully explain what’s going on in the code, so it could be a little complicated for a complete beginner.

Overall, though, I’m impressed with the direction this book goes. The angle is good, with a focus outside of the typical ‘build a blog in 20 minutes’ example.

Top 10 Things I’m Doing to Become a Badass Technical Consultant Like Tom Myer

OK, I was kidding about the top 10 part up there…

I’ve just read Tom Myer‘s book, From Geek to Peak: Your First 365 Days as a Technical Consultant, and I thought I’d share my comments about it.

Firstly, the book is written an a very fast-reading, snarky and entertaining style. It’s not textbook, but more a walk through of Tom’s personal experience in entering the field of technical consulting.

For me, this book wasn’t so much groundbreaking, as a total confirmation of what I’ve been doing so far with my company, Conflux Group. After reading through this book, I’m now more confident than ever that I’ve been moving in the right direction since I started my business last year, and formalized it this January.

As I continue on in my own endeavors, I’ll certainly be thinking back to the practical tips Myer provides for building credibility and visibility, finding new clients and diversifying, all things that I had in my mind, but have now been made more clear.

The one factor that does seem missing from the book is social networking. There is some talk about LinkedIn and blogging, but a future edition could certainly include some commentary on leveraging social networking giants like Twitter and Facebook.  I see three main areas where social networking can be vitally important to a burgeoning consultant.

1. Keep up in the game. As a technologist, it’s vitally important to know what the current trends in technology are and understand how and when to use various tools for your clients. Sometimes you’re given the chance to choose a solution, while other times the client tells you what they want you to use. Either way, it’s important to know what’s out there and be knowledgeable enough to give that all-important critical feedback as well as get the job done.
2. Build a support network. We all get stuck sometimes. And we all need to joke around about our work sometimes. The unfortunate part about working alone, though, is that you’re doing just that — working alone. Social networking tools can help you stay connected with other people in your field to build casual relationships (and sometimes business relationships too) that can help you out when you’re stuck or need a break from the daily grind.
3. Reel in new clients with your own 140-character wit and charm. Many clients may not be the most tech-savvy, and so, it may not be the most common place to build new client-consultant relationships, but it can’t hurt to try. I can say that my most steady client, another web firm needing additional development help, was found through Twitter.

Anyway, even if you’re not the reading type, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of From Geek to Peak for yourself if you’re even remotely considering turning your personal obsession with all things nerd into a profitable part-time or full-time job. If nothing else, it’ll be your small part help keep Tom and his wife Hope from going homeless.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Just got finished reading Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger.

It’s an impressive piece spanning from the technological to the sociolgical and beyond. It documents the place the World Wide Web currently holds in our society and how it turns the world we know upside down.

I highly recommend this book for everyone to read. For techies, it’ll take your head out of the server room and get you thinking about the real impact the Internet is having beyond the infrastructure. For the luddites, it’ll really open your eyes as to what the Web really is, beyond a flickering computer screen.

I think the key takeaway from the book is that the Internet redefines what it means to be social. No longer is socialization limited by proximity and time. Instead, we can now interact at a deep personal level from any place at any time. That’s the magic of the massive network we’ve built in the past two decades. And it’s cause for us to stop and think and reconsider the parameters we use to try to define our world.

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

I just got my copy of Dan Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. For those that don’t recognize the name, Pink is the author of bestselling books, A Whole New Mind and Free Agent Nation.

I read A Whole New Mind a while back and really enjoyed it. So, naturally I was attracted when his new book was released.

I was a little leary of the new book’s format, as it’s written/illustrated in manga… not my usual style. I did, however, quickly get into it, and I was able to finish the book in less than an hour.

I will spare you the details, but Johnny Bunko is an average office worker who receives six career lessons from an interesting career counselor, Diana. The points Pink makes through his fictional counselor are pretty good, although for those in the know, they certainly aren’t groundbreaking.

As I found with his previous works, Pink’s books are groundbreaking for some, but people like me tend to find them comfortably affirming. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who thinks the way I do.

Overall an enjoyable read. Check out www.johnnybunko.com for some free samples from the book. I recommend reading it through in the bookstore. It’s a super-fast read.