PHP What it is and Why it is used

So I Start my journey up here by saying Hello!!!! to all of you.

What is PHP?

Simply the first question arising in our minds is what is PHP.

Simple answer to it is PHP is a server scripting language, and is a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive Web pages.It was Originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, it now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

(more information about php history can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP)

Why was PHP made?

PHP development began in 1994 when the developer Rasmus Lerdorf wrote a series of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Perl scripts, which he used to maintain his personal homepage.He rewrote these scripts in C for performance reasons, extending them to add the ability to work with web forms and to communicate with databases and called this implementation "Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter" or PHP/FI. This implementation could be used to build simple, dynamic web applications.

Features Of PHP

1. PHP is an open source scripting language that is designed for Web application development and enables very simple scripting. PHP is widely used for content management, database access, eCommerce, forums, blogs, wikis, and other web based applications.
2. PHP combined with MySql are cross platform.
3. PHP can be used on all major operating systems, including Linux, Solaris, Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS and many more.
4. PHP supports for most of web servers today this includes Apache, Microsoft IIS, Netscape, Personal Web Server etc. For majaority of servers PHP has a module, for the others supporting the CGI standard, PHP can work as CGI processor.
5. PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on server side.
6. PHP is free to download from the official PHP resource www.php.net .
7. PHP can be embedded into HTML.

Benefits Of PHP over other scripting language

1: Simple and easy to learn

PHP scripting is definitely one of the easiest, scripting language to learn and grasp for developers. This is partially due to the similarities PHP syntax has with C and Java.

2: Support

Since PHP has large user base due to its growing popularity hence there is large available support for it over and through other resources.

3: Freedom

When comparing PHP to a language such as ASPX, the level of freedom you get is far superior. You can use any text editor in order to code PHP such as Notebook++, jEdit, Emacs, Bluefish, or even just Notepad if you feel inclined. If you want to develop applications with ASPX, you’re going to be limited to Microsoft Visual Studio.

4: Free

There are no costs associated with using PHP, including updates. PHP is 100% free for anyone to use.

5: Frameworks

There are large number of PHP framework available like DIY, Zoop, Yii etc.

6: Easier to fix problems

Benefit you get with PHP is that problems aren't as difficult to find and fix as they are with other languages. This is because with each request, PHP cleans up and starts over. So an issue with one request will not necessarily disrupt another.

7: Object Oriented

PHP actually has the ability to call Java and Windows COM objects. In addition to this, you can create custom classes. Other classes can actually borrow from those custom classes as well which extends the capabilities of PHP even further.

8: Speed

Since PHP does not use a lot of a system’s resources in order to run, it operates much faster than other scripting languages. Even when used with other software, PHP still retains speed without slowing down other processes.