Rather surprising to see PHP so high here since I rarely see PHP-related submissions on HN. How do people learn it? I've found that the best thing for me was finding StumbleUpon and reading up as much as I could about best practices in PHP and programming in general. Now I force myself to try a different language for my own projects to get away from PHP as a "comfort zone".
I'm a bit shocked to see any significant popularity here, as it seems to be a language most hackers avoid. I'd like to know why people are interested in the languages they're learning - not just PHP.
The OP asked about what you are currently learning. Many folks may actually be required to learn it for their job, rather than for professional enrichment.
I'm a bookworm, so I sought out well-regarded books on Amazon. I started with 'PHP and MySQL Web Development' by Welling & Thomson, and could not have been happier. It's hefty (nearly 1,000 pages for the latest edition), but was well worth the time. Next up was 'PHP in Action', which is similar to the later chapters in Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python (one hell of a book, btw) and was coauthored by Chris Shiflett.
I've since read two of Ullman's books (PHP for the WWW and PHP 5 Advanced), the Powers books (PHP Solutions and PHP Object-Oriented Solutions), and Shiflett's 'Essential PHP Security' (the PHPSec guide is required reading also).
The two Apress Pro books ('PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice' and 'Pro PHP'), 'Essential PHP Tools', 'PHP5 Power Programming' (Andi Gutmans is a coauthor) and 'Advanced PHP Programming' by Schlossnagle are up next, although I'm currently working through SICP.
(Note: I switched to Postgres since reading Welling & Thomson; there are basically 10x as many MySQL books as PostgreSQL ones, unfortunately)
Did you know OmniTI (employers of Shiflett and Welling, former employer of Thomson, and sister company to MessageSystems (Wez Furlong & George Schlossnagle) have an office in Brooklyn? I believe the main contributor to CakePHP works there too. If you're that interested in PHP, it might be something to consider being relatively close by.
I'm bookish in how I approach programming too, and among your list have read "PHP & MySQL Web Development," Shiflett's "Essential PHP Security," and "Advanced PHP Programming" when I was first starting out (I started out as a PHP programmer). If you're anything like me, the books get less exciting as the knowledge they contain gets more familiar, which is inevitable among a certain class of books. I now read more language agnostic books on algorithms, math, and some broader concepts. We'll see how that goes.
Sara Goleman has a book on writing extensions for PHP that you might like if you want to 'cross the threshold.' These sorts of things can be useful to know how it all works internally, even if you aren't writing a ton of extensions yourself. The Schlossnagle book has a chapter on that. I'm not sure how much movement PHP internals have (I'm out of that world now).
I didn't know OmniTI had an office up here. I definitely have noticed diminishing returns from all the PHP reading; I still find it satisfying, but I'm not sure how long that'll last. Thanks for the 'Extending and Embedding PHP' recommendation. Any other recommendations (especially non-PHP ones) are welcome. 'me' at the first domain in my profile.
