Today was my scheduled date for publishing the final edited copy of Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP. Although the writing itself is complete, it has yet to finish its final editing pass. As such, the final version of the book is going to be delayed by at least a week. My apologies for the delay.

Even so, we have new reviews of the completed book! Here is one from J. Michael Ward:

Superb. This is one of those books that PHP developers from all skill levels will be able to glean value from, and I know after just a single read-through that it will be an oft-referenced resource when I need to convert my old legacy-based procedural code into something cleaner, object-oriented, and testable.

...

This is a very thorough guide to understanding how to write object-oriented programming in PHP in 2014 and getting developers stuck with legacy codebases up to speed with the tools that are available to them. I will recommend this to anyone who will listen.

And another from James Fuller:

The book is full of opinions on how to structure an application, but it thankfully avoids the trap of coming off as over-zealous and judgemental. The people who need this book know that legacy code is not a black-and-white problem and the tone of the book is both sympathetic and prescriptive.

...

The book is by no means overly-verbose, as you can read through it in a few well-spaced hours. I think that’s a good thing and you will probably find yourself going back to the book for reference time-and-time again, as I have already done in the period since I bought the book in beta. Occasionally you will have the annoying task of flipping to an appendix to read a large block of code but that is really a problem with any book that discusses code in detail.

And yet another from Joel Clermont:

Reading through the book, it feels like you're pair programming with the author. I'm at the keyboard, driving, and the author is navigating, telling me where to go and what to do next. Each step is practical, self-contained and moves you closer to the end goal you seek: maintainable code.

I highly recommend this book. Even if you're a seasoned developer like me (I've been writing code professionally more than 20 years), you will benefit from Paul's approach and detailed documentation of the process.

If you feel overwhelmed by a legacy codebase, go out and buy Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP today. (Updates are free for life.) The sooner you get started modernizing, the sooner you can start going home on time!

Are you stuck with a legacy PHP application? You should buy my book because it gives you a step-by-step guide to improving you codebase, all while keeping it running the whole time.