Is Koterov's book relevant?

Question

PHP

Started reading the book "PHP5 in the original" , 2nd edition. I chose it based on positive reviews, almost all sources indicate it as the best choice for a beginner. But the year of release is a little confusing - 2008, and even more so that the author writes directly in the book about the technologies of 2004. Does it make sense to read this book?
It is also interesting to know your opinion on the following books:
Developing Web Applications with PHP and MySQL
PHP. Objects, patterns, and techniques for programming
HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. Gentlemen's set...

Answer 1

It's a great book for a beginner, but not the whole book. Part II "Choosing and configuring tools" is undeniably outdated. There is no description of new functionality above 5.3 (the current version 5.0 is mentioned in the book). HTML5 and CSS3 have been mentioned before, but the book is not about layout. Part V "Object-Oriented Programming in PHP" also does not claim to be relevant. Strengths: description of the language base, RegEx, XPath, thorough consideration of the DOM, description of the basics of the Web, consideration of basic tasks.
Mat Zandstra is a must read, but not the first book.
"Development of Web applications using PHP and MySQL" leafed through recently, I did not see anything new - I did not read it. In terms of content, the part intersects with Koterov.
UPD. When reading Koterov, the description of the functional should first be compared with php., some may be outdated for older versions (reading php.net regularly is a good habit). The book contains a description of solving problems that have already been solved at the kernel level.

Answer 2

What year are the reviews? The fact is that a lot has changed since those times, if you read this book, then after reading it your knowledge will be irrelevant, although it certainly contains a large share of basic useful information. But besides it, be prepared that you will have to independently obtain a huge reservoir of new knowledge. At a minimum, these are: html5 instead of the obsolete html4 (and css3, respectively) - new syntactic elements, and quite significant in the modern web; apache 2.4+nginx instead of the junk that is advised in the book; vagrant instead of denver (although it’s probably too early for a beginner to install vagrant right away, but keep this in mind for the future, in general I would advise openserver, it is much more convenient and functional than denver), namespaces in php - be sure to find information about this, anonymous functions and traits are the same the book could hardly describe the functionality that appeared after its release, but meanwhile in projects and frameworks it is all the time, in general, you will have to study all the innovations since the version described in the book, otherwise in the future you will simply be confused by the fact that in some project, someone uses the new syntax instead of the old one; composer - pear is no longer relevant, git - in my opinion, in a modern book on php, at least in passing, the existence of version control systems should be mentioned, apache and denver have not forgotten. I have not read the book, I draw conclusions only on the content and year of issue. In addition, it concerns the description of the functionality of the language, at first glance there is a lot of information, but I don’t know how it is presented, so in this part it can turn out to be very good ... but 2008 - I would use the search on the toaster if I were you and chose those editions

Answer 3

Highly.