Spreading PHP awareness

In my earlier post, I had mentioned a few points as to why there is a lack of talented php programmers in Nagpur. In that post I have discussed only the root causes of this paucity. The solutions to those causes will be discussed in a series of topics I will be publishing in the next few weeks.

Today I will try to put forth my thoughts on how to spread the PHP awareness.

PHP is still an alien language for an average college student. I have met a lot of students who have never heard of PHP. Let alone students, the professors/teachers of technical institutes themselves don’t know what is PHP. Until the college students are unaware of what PHP is – its popularity as a career choice and in turn students becoming good PHP programmers is not possible. There are ofcourse few exceptions where students are fully aware of php and are thriving to learn and become good php programmers.

One thing is for sure – If you want to spread the awareness on any topic then the best audience to target are college going students. New topics (in our case programming languages) spread like wildfire amongst college students. I think we need to do the following…

• Start discussing web development with young members of your family and friends. If they get interested, the word will automatically spread amongst their friend circle.
• Don’t discuss PHP directly with an absolute newbie. First make them aware of general web development. Once the interest develops – tell them what are the tools for web development and then introduce to PHP
• Discuss the merits of PHP like free, open source, large community, resources available fairly easily etc..
• Let them know which big websites are using PHP. If you need your website developed with this kind of software, then find a web design agency here that can go it for you. Ex: Yahoo!, Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr and many others.
• Companies working in PHP should come forward and start taking free workshops in colleges. This is one thing which we are considering doing in coming months
• Seasoned PHP developers should form some sort of group and hold regular meetups. Students and beginners should be invited to such meetups. For this purpose we have started Nagpur PHP Meetup which is a monthly event.

I would like to hear what else can be done to spread PHP. Please leave a comment with your suggestions.

Tags: PHP, programming, thoughts