As a Web Development major, I have learned to appreciate the exhilarating moment when my mind engages a new language. Learning PHP has been an experience, to say the least. There were a few times where I incorporated JavaScript, whereas that is a language that I am comfortable with, and I guess by default, that is typically what I code. In the beginning of the course, I was worried about what software I should use, and what would be acceptable, but thankfully I just had to click on the link that was provided, and it was smooth sailing from there. This course has been very informative, and unfortunately due to some inconvenient illness, I got pretty behind. I would suggest to any future student to make sure you do not get behind. Playing catchup can be very difficult, especially when you are a full-time student and working a full-time job. It is best to just stay on top of the workload, and if you run into any issues, just reach out to the professor, and hopefully work something out.

Throughout the duration of this course, there has been many up’s and downs. A few ups have been learning the capabilities of PHP. It is tremendous. I have taken Python, JavaScript, C# and ASP.NET and I am happy to add PHP to this list. I really enjoy learning a new language and comparing them to the other languages that I have learned. Now sadly we must take the good with the bad. I did not enjoy the day and time of the meet. I had to watch the meets recording the day after, or while doing my homework. I know it is hard to determine and set an appropriate time for the meet that works for everyone, which I am sure is difficult.

A few significant learning moments in this course was learning about PHP form Processes and how you can use $_GET, $_POST, or $_REQUEST superglobal arrays to access form data. I found this very interesting. I also enjoyed learning about the form processing workflow – Access the value in $_POST(carefully), check that the submitted value is valid, process the value(MVC) and then redirect or render a template. There was a video based on this process which was located in the week four videos section and the video went over an example which was very informative. I understood this process much better because of it.

Nevertheless, I had multiple ah ha moments. As mentioned before, I was very worried about what software we would be using. I was dreading the first homework assignment because it is always a hassle to get a grasp of things right in the beginning. I worried so much about the first assignment and then when I opened the link, I realized the professor included a starter link to the opensource site that we would be modifying. This was a great a moment for me, and as also a relief. Another ah ha moment was when I was completing homework ten. I was having issues with question two - Alice and Bob want to have a private (encrypted) email conversation. Explain how Alice can send a secure email to Bob using public/private key cryptography. I am not sure where my head was at during this, but I initially wrote something completely off the wall, and then I remembered something very similar being discussed in the weekly videos. I then located said video and the video touched based on a similar scenario. I was relieved that I remembered something so similar and was able to refer back to it and get full credit for that question.

Lastly, based on my experience and expectations, how would I characterize what I have learned in this course? For starters, I was nervous for this class. I took python last semester, I am more comfortable coding in JavaScript, and I code in SQL every single day for work. I was nervous that I would get too confused. Every language is different. I am very experienced in SQL, I like coding in JavaScript, and the last programming language I took was Python. It is a mess. I was nervous that I would code one line in JavaScript, the next in SQL, and so on so forth. I however think I did okay. On the first few assignments, I got some feedback that I was coding in JavaScript. Which I will admit did not surprise me, but once I got that feedback, I made sure that I was coding in PHP. I will say that I enjoyed the database section of the course. It was a break from programming language, so I just focused on the basic SQL. I work with ER diagrams, relational databases every day. I work in the IT Department for Genesis HealthCare as a Reporting Analyst. English Is our first language there, SQL is our second, and Clinical terminology is our third (I consider this another language because of how extensive it is). Now to characterize this all to what I have learned in this class, I would say I learned how to differentiate PHP with other languages and I learned that it is an open source language, which is always convenient. I created my Mother’s website using Bootstrap, which was self-taught, and if I would have known this language beforehand, I probably would have attempted to create her website using PHP frameworks.