I learned from installing hacks. I'd take a hack, try to see what this and that does, and after 1,000,000 parse errors, I learned some PHP! :)

Everyday I spend hacking, I feel I'm getting to know vB a bit better but it comes the stage where you want to do the improvement! Thanks everyone for giving me tips, I'm going to get a few books...:D, how much do they cost? It would be better if I bought them off the net wouldn't it? If so, where from? Where is it cheapest?

Self-taught, already knew Java, C++, Visual Basic and some other languages and at that point any language gets to be easy to pick up.

MySQL took a bit longer but since I was used to seeing vB queries it eventually came to me.

Self-taught too in PHP. I started programming when I wrote my first game in DOS BASIC over in 1985 (or thereabouts) for my sister. Learnt PHP off hacking vB and from a few sites I find when I'm trying to debug some code.

@N9ne - PHP Books can cost anywhere from ?20 - ?40 for a decent one...

I bought a PHP book that cost me ?17.99 in a sale, but normally costs ?21.99...

You wont find one cheap that is useful;)

Satan

Im still learning php but most of what i learn was thru hacking vBulletin. I still have problems with SQL querys but im getting better everyday. Whats really helped me was knowing perl, i learned it much the same way from hacking ubb for over 2 years.

Core PHP by Leon Atkison

I learnt it because i used vBulletin and wanted a better understanding of it and to write various modfiications. I knew perl before hand when i used UBB though.

Yeah, I had previous knowledge with programming languages like C++, Java, VB, Perl, ASP and others.... Then, when I bought vB and started to hack it, I found that it was really "easy" to learn.... I'm still learning it with the help of the PHP manual (for syntax reference).

Is that why vB has 120x times the amount of hacks UBB has? :D

I myself used wrox books through most of my learning. www.wrox.com they dont good examples as erwin has showed us.