I am diving into magento programming and am looking for a structured introduction. Unfortunately I do not find much, but some books on magento 1.3 (I'm not looking for administration, theming or how to increase sales, I'm looking for sys architecture, extension dev and so on).
Since I'm coming from typo3, I know that two years can include game changers (extbase in typo3).
So, are books for 1.3 still recommendable? Are there any other structural resources that go beyond HELLO WORLD?
EDIT: I'm as well looking for hints regarding the main gaps between 1.3 and 1.7 and how to fill them.
Yep, buy them. Of course stuff has changed, been removed or added but the core features you touch while working with magento remain still the same. You can learn all about the folder structur and codepools from the very beginning, e.g. and i believe unless there is a new magento version made from scratch that is something that will never change. So go ahead.
I think that you need to start with Alan Storm's tutorials on Magento and then go through a book. Anyway, if you manage to survive those tutorials and you have time to poke around Magento's source code, you'll be able to do many things with this framework.