Why PHP is still a popular language

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PHP: still popular

The PHP language is widely used in the field of programming as the basis for creating websites of any complexity – from business cards to corporate portals. The name comes from the concept of “Personal Home Page”, which reflects the original purpose – the creation of personal pages on the Internet.

Currently, the platform is supported by the vast majority of hosting providers and is considered the leader among the tools for creating dynamic websites.

PHP development history

PHP was first released in 1994. It was a Perl CGI script that collected statistics on Rasmus Lerdorf’s resume views. This is what determined the name of the language because it grew out of a real personal page. At that time there was still no concept of Open Source, and all free software was distributed under the label “freeware”.

Here is the sequence of new versions:

  • PHP/FI – by mid-1995, the main module was rewritten in C. The first tags for inserting HTML code appeared, but so far there were no tools for linking web pages and databases. The developer has added mSQL support to make it easier to create websites. Due to the openness, Lerdorf was constantly sent recommendations for fixing errors and improving the platform. As a result, the second version of PHP was released in 1996, and by 1997 more than 50,000 sites using the language’s capabilities had appeared on the Internet.
  • PHP 3 was created by Andy Gutmans and Ziv Surazsky based on Lerdorf’s work. Getting started on the update was related to the creation of an eCommerce application. After that, the PHP/FI version was practically abandoned. In the third release, the API appeared as the main means of extending the functionality. An advantage of the version is the support for object-oriented syntax.
  • PHP 4. The success of the third version led to the decision to rewrite the platform core. Therefore, since 1998, the developers started creating a fundamentally new system – performance was noticeably increased, output buffering was introduced, and support for HTTP sessions was added. The new release was officially presented to the market in 2000. As it was before, developers from all over the world were involved in the finalization of the functionality.
  • PHP 5 was released in 2004. In addition to another increase in productivity, there was support for XML, and the programming system became similar to Java. Due to such major changes, the release lost compatibility with previous versions, but the new features were worth it. The platform has become a full-fledged programming language.

Nowadays, the 6th and 7th versions of PHP are more common. The first one, since 2010, is considered unpromising due to the difficulties with Unicode support. Since 2015, new developments are mainly carried out using the seventh version of PHP. It adds a ton of new operators, so backward compatibility suffers a little.

Areas of use

The advantage of PHP is that it is a server-side language. Therefore, it became the basis for creating web applications – users receive the result of calculations, and the remote server takes all the load associated with it. This is what caused the emergence of such CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal. Frameworks like Laravel, Yii2, Symfony are written in PHP.

There are three main areas where PHP is in demand:

  • Server-side scripting. The main application of PHP is the creation of sites hosted on a hosting (pre-configured for this).
  • Writing scripts that run on the command line independently of the web server and browser. Examples of applications are Task Scheduler for Windows, cron for Linux.
  • Development of client-side GUI applications. The main area of ​​application is the creation of cross-platform applications.

PHP is supported by literally all platforms – from Microsoft Windows and macOS to GNU Linux, Unix, RISC OS, OS/2, and others. It is also compatible with common web servers – Apache, Personal Web Server, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Netscape, Oreilly Website Pro, iPlanet, OmniHTTPd, Xitami, Caudium.

PHP perspectives

PHP analogs are actively used today – Angular, React, Node.js, Python. But PHP is holding on and will hold on for a long time. Still, plenty of sites have been developed and continue to be developed with the active use of PHP functionality (up to 79%, according to W3Tech statistics). 

Benefits of using PHP:

  • low entry threshold;
  • proven development tools;
  • large professional community;
  • a large library of ready-made solutions;
  • it is undemanding to the working environment.

From a beginner’s point of view, this is a good platform to learn about website development. The syntax of the language belongs to the C-like group, so after PHP, it is easy to master Java, C #, C ++, and similar platforms. It will be a little more difficult to switch to Python or Goland, but this is a matter of technique. All in all, this language is actively developing.