About one week, in 1999. It helped that I already knew C.
How long do you think It would take to script a tutorial database, like Good-tutorials? With knowledge of only html.
It depends on what other programming languages you are familiar with. It took me 3 weeks to learn PHP while developing a medium website with a backend administration area … but I was very familiar with programming in C/C++ when I started.
I guess astericks is right, it doesn’t matter how long others take to learn, what matters is how long you’ll take to learn and it does matter if you are out-n-out newbie to programming or you come from desktop programming crowd(C, Java, Pascal, etc.) or if you are familiar with web-programming. I created a basic 1 page SQL execution script, nothing fancy, just simple select & insert/update etc after reading the manual & Kev’s article for just 1 hour. And I built my first basic full PHP website(templating/database driven content/basic CMS/contact form etc.) in 1 week since I first coded that DB script in PHP.
But what mattered then was that I was already well versed in ASP & JSP/Servlets, so I had quite an experience with web-programming. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it takes you 1 week(or more) just to replicate the SQL execution script that I built in 1 hour, if you are totally new to web-programming. And I don’t say that I did it fast, some other newbie could possibly do it in 30 minutes.
So what matters really is how much you know & which references are you consulting. If you are being taught by another PHP developer, you’ll probably learn faster than you would learn on your own from the manual and/or online articles/step-by-step tutorials. 
1 month for the current levels of my knowledge which just made a blog site and configured phpbb (though this is not rocket science).
Don’t worry about the amount of time. With dedication and inspiration, it’ll be done within as short a period as you can think.
me too
It took me about 20 minutes to modify that contact form, but the only thing that really made me want to learn the language was includes, since I’m not much of a database guy, and I hated the static files. Especially changing the menu… shivers
I’ve been working with it for around 11 months now. About 6, if you don’t count the time that I had no idea why I was using ‘$name = $_GET[‘name’];’ 
I didn’t really touch a cms until about 1-2 months ago. I realized that the code sucked, so I deleted it, and just started it with OOP.
Right now I’m thinking database + a script to cache the files in includes, for the site. Hmmm… strokes non-existent goatee
(And that timeline is scary… Very scary…)
Just one piece of advise if you plan on doing this for a living… don’t get too hung up on MySQL. As I have learned, its ANSI SQL standard support leaves a lot to be desired. Well I mean you should learn MySQL, but also learn standard SQL as well, and know when MySQL deviates from the standards.
If you ever plan on writing an enterprise level PHP application, it is a good thing to know because you will most likely want your application to work properly with other RDBMS like PostgreSQL (which is free and open source like mySQL), Sybase, MS SQL, etc. Although in these situations you’d probably make some kind of query repository for each RDBMS to have its own select queries, just like each has its own driver, as writing portable SQL, especially when involving complex select queries, is incredibly difficult. Much easier and more efficient to give each its own optimized repository to pull from.
But if you plan on coding exclusively for MySQL, then you are probably ok just knowing about just MySQL.
This is kind of true, but I don’t think it is so black and white. Thinking back on how I did things, I learnt very, very basic JavaScript first, then some C/C++ basics (which help understood things like memory and types), and then I improved my programming by programming in languages like PHP. Because while lower-level languages are great to understand the computer and it specifics, they become cumbersome when you are trying to learn what really needs to be learnt: using a programming language as a medium to solve problems. This problem solving skills neccessary to be a programmer, achievable only by practical experience, is much faster and less frustrating with langauges which allow you to forget about the computer and it low-level features (memory & garbage collection, types, etc), and worry about the problem at hand.
You will, however, after tackling weakly-typed langauges be (probably) frustrated with working with strongly & statically typed languages, if only for the sole reason that it takes more typing.
That is how I see it, anyhow.
You never stop learning. but basicly it took me 1 year today!
learning the basics took a month and i never stop learning its a continuous process
Leading on from the original question of how long did it take to learn PHP, how much PHP would you say you have to know to safely say you “know” PHP?? Just interested.
I know all the basics of PHP - functions, conditionals, iteration, operators, file handling, variables etc and am now doing MySQL querying (made a guestbook, new script etc) - Would that be considered intermediate PHP?
Might want to ask this first: “What do you need to know before you can say you ‘know’ php?”
Yeah, sorry, thats what I meant.
I would say once you get to grips with $_POST’s and $_GET’s and variables you know the basics. Obviously you have security and many other things to learn. I have been working with PHP for just over a year and so far I have found it easy to learn. I continually learn new things every day. I think the project you are working depends what you learn. If you are writing an e-commerce website you will learn techniques such as security and database design, sessions, cookies etc.
Whereas if you are working on a simple website that perhaps provides gallery features or something less technical you will learn other php concepts.
Then their are functions, object orientated design to learn - which is my next stage.
There isn’t really a time period that PHP can be learnt, languages such as Java and C will take considerably longer because of their nature. Just go with the flow and you will learn a lot. Forums (like this) are a great place to sponge up lots of knowledge and practices.
I’ve been programming for about 6 years, in which i’ve learned visual basic, java, php, javascript and a little perl,
i learned to program in java which is good for me understanding php as its quite simular, i have to say that i found javascript the hardest to learn and still make stupid errors, such as the scope of variables depending where u declare them,
i have to say that i found php quite easy to learn after learning java first, and when object oriented php was introduced that was even easier
if you are looking for a good PHP book, check out "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL" by [url=“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&rank=relevancerank&field-author-exact=W.%20J.%20Gilmore/102-9021391-0114506”]W.J. Gilmore
It’s pretty good for a beginner and it’s even better once you get some skills going. Its by far the best PHP reference I have found. Kevin Yank’s book is really good for the early beginner.
PHP seems like most things to me. Easy to learn, hard to master.
It’s not necessarily “hard” to master, but it does take time.
You can learn the basics and be up and running within a matter of days, weeks or months (depending on how much time you can devote to it), but you never stop learning better ways to do things.
I’ve been at it for about 3 years, and I feel fairly proficient in just about everything programming-wise except for OOP.
Wow. Odd question - we’re all at different places in our lives/careers/like that, so we all work and think completely differently. I studied computer programming in college in the early '90’s, spent a year or three trying to build complex programs (in BASIC/COBOL/FORTRAN). A few years later, I went off on my own and learned perl, built a complete functional website, with DB access, session control and the like in about a year, from zilch to good understanding. Then I rebuilt the entire thing in PHP, took six to eight months to learn the basics. Then I rewrote it in PHP5, with objects and all - about three months. Just tried the thing under the RAILS framework, and built it from start to finish in two weeks. Each case was with no prior knowledge, jump in with both feet, and learn as I go.
But that’s just me.