You've stumbled upon my little corner on GitHub, where PHP gets weird, frameworks are (initially) optional [but still crucial], and learning might just be... an experience.

Yeah, you read that right. I'm on a mission, inspired by Patrick Louys and a healthy dose of "there has to be a better way to really understand this stuff." I'm building a free, open-source, no-paywall-ever tutorial series designed to teach you HOW TO BUILD PRACTICAL PHP APPLICATIONS BY GLUEING COMPOSER PACKAGES TOGETHER AND NOT RELYING TOO MUCH ON FRAMEWORKS (I am not against frameworks, but... why not try something different?).

The Grand Plan (aka The Two Circles of Tutorial Hell... or Heaven? You decide.):

1. The Basic Tutorial:

   • Think Patrick Louys's original concise brilliance, but dragged kicking and screaming into modern PHP (aiming for 8.4+ eventually, folks!).
   • Short, sweet (mostly), MVC-focused.
   • We'll use some "Laravel-like magic" with pre-existing Composer packages to get stuff done. Why? Because sometimes, seeing results fast is nice before we tear it all apart.
   • Disclaimer: I might make some questionable coding decisions here for pedagogical shock value. Don't worry, I'll call myself out. It's a feature, not a bug.

2. The Advanced Tutorial:

   • This is where we take the training wheels off the basic app and possibly set them on fire.
   • We refactor that "magic" into "Symfony-like explicitness." Think Modular Monoliths, MVCS within modules, robust APIs, and all the modern PHP goodies like Enums and Attributes.
   • It's designed to be... challenging. So challenging, in fact, that three developers have already rage-quit and gone back to WordPress. You've been warned. But the rewards? Chef's kiss.
   • We'll even deploy the monstrosity we build to Cloud Run, because why not? (And the frontend on Cloudflare Pages, because I like to live dangerously).

The Philosophy Behind The Madness: Stop chasing frameworks blindly. Learn PHP. Learn how to glue components. Understand the "why" before the "how-to-use-this-specific-framework-feature." That's the core.

All the action happens under our dedicated GitHub Organization: Component Oriented PHP

Here's a map to the key places:

• ✍️ The Tutorial Itself (Markdown Goodness): https://github.com/Component-Oriented-PHP/tutorials - This is where the sacred (and profane) texts reside.
• 💡 Basic Application (The "Before" Picture): https://github.com/Component-Oriented-PHP/basic-application - The final output of the basic tutorial. Simple, a bit magical.
• 🛠️ Advanced Application (The "After" Picture... and an ongoing battle): https://github.com/Component-Oriented-PHP/application - The beast we build in the advanced tutorial.
• 🎨 Example Frontend (Not part of the tutorial, just a demo consumer): https://github.com/Component-Oriented-PHP/frontend - Shows the API in action with some javascript framework (not decided which one yet).

My teaching style is... unique. Expect:

• Honesty (sometimes brutal).
• Humor (often questionable, results may vary).
• A distinct lack of corporate fluff.
• Me making "bad decisions" on purpose in the basic tutorial to teach you what not to do, and then showing you how to fix it. It's a ride.

• New to this framework-less world? Start with the Basic Tutorial. It's designed to be a (somewhat) gentle introduction.
• Feeling brave? Got some PHP battle scars? The Advanced Tutorial is where the real pain... uh, fun... begins.
• Spotted a typo that's driving you nuts? An error in my 'deliberate' bad code that's actually bad? Contributions are welcome, especially for the brave souls who venture into the advanced stuff. Check out the CONTRIBUTING.md in the respective repos (once I write them, ha!). Just be warned, my issue responses might also contain traces of my... unique... charm.

This whole shebang is free, as in "no paywalls, ever." That's the deal. But if you find this stuff valuable, learn something, or just get a good laugh, and you feel like contributing to my rapidly depleting coffee (or sanity) reserves:

👉 Buy Me a Tea (or a stronger drink for the advanced tutorial)

No pressure. Seriously. Your time and attention are awesome enough.

Thanks for stopping by! Now, go break some code (and then learn how to fix it elegantly).