I had a phone interview yesterday for a fascinating LAMP developer position. The company and the position intrigued me enough to pursue the job, despite the prospect of having to move 3000 miles from home. (I guess I am open to relocation after all.) The interview went well, and I made a good impression on the interviewers with both my database expertise and my personality—I would have fit well into their corporate culture. The only area I was lacking in was a background in Zend Framework and Model View Controller (MVC). Sadly for me, that was a deal breaker.

My interviewers gave me great advice, though. As a LAMP developer, I am really missing out on lots of potential opportunities due to my lack of heavy object-oriented programming (OOP) experience. And Zend is a great framework to focus on, as it appears to be the industry leader. So they advised me to get some Zend and MVC experience under my belt.

I took their advice to heart and did a quick Google search. To my delight I found a link on Zend’s own site for the Zend Framework Quick Start. Always up for a challenge, I started plugging away immediately. Several steps were outlined, and the Zend Framework & MVC Introduction step was a snap. I was pumped to learn more.

That’s when I hit a severe roadblock.

The next step, Create Your Project, indicated that I needed to download and extract Zend Framework. It advised, “The easiest way to get Zend Framework along with a complete PHP stack is by installing » Zend Server.” I navigated to the appropriate version for my Windows Vista 64-bit laptop machine and followed the directions.

The complete install wanted to include DB2 version 9.5. This would not do, as I already have version 9.8 running. So I aborted that portion of the install, but everything else appeared to complete just fine.

Then, after several false starts, I was finally able to create my project, but all of the instructions from the heading “The Bootstrap” on may as well have been written in Martian. I know that pieces are missing, because I am unable to continue with subsequent steps in what really should be a simply “Quick Start” tutorial.

So much for getting up to speed in Zend fast. I really am a quick learn, but when manuals and tutorials have been written by techies making massive assumptions about lingo and jargon, the rest of us (even techies like me proficient in other disciplines) are dead in the water.

This is yet another example of poorly written tutorials, which is the major reason I enjoy Demystifying Technology® for myself and my clients. I have an uncanny knack for being able to translate technical jargon into understandable English … provided I can understand it in the first place.

If anyone can suggest a place for me to go to get a good solid background in Zend, I would be most appreciative. Please add your comments and suggestions below.

As part of an overall update to this website, this blog is dedicated to solving your technical challenges. We are, after all,

Demystifying Technology®

Meanwhile, we invite you to check out our related blogs:

• carleric.com – Carl Eric Johnson’s personal blog about anything and everything (including technical posts that will ultimately be imported here)
• demystifyingprosperity.com – Network marketing (MLM) tips for the book Carl is writing, Demystifying Prosperity™