25 Aug 09 What is PHP?

PHP is a great programming language to start with and it’s one of the easiest to grasp. In this page I will explain what it stands for, what it can be used for and the history of it. If you’re already a programmer, you’ll see that the syntax is similar to other programming languages like C or Java.

Getting Started
PHP is technically a scripting language that runs on a Web server and outputs HTML. Whereas your Web browser like Mozilla Firefox runs on your personal computer, PHP will run on the servers that your Web browser accesses when loading a web page. It’s not actually running on your computer, unless you’re running your own server for developing, which we will go into more detail later.

It is designed to use with HTML. Regular HTML lets you create a web page that doesn’t change. You write some text, upload it to the server and it’s done. The text doesn’t change unless you change it. Using PHP, you are able to dynamically change the content of your web site. For example, you may ask your visitor if they are male or female and based on their response you can use PHP to send unique text to their screen.

What does PHP stand for?
Contrary to not-so-common belief, PHP does not stand for Pretty Hippos in Pink. This is unfortunate but we’ll have to move on. Its original meaning was Personal Home Page Tools and it was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 to help assist himself and others with Web development. Later on in PHP 3.0, the name was changed to PHP: Hypertext Processor. Yes, the acronym is part of the name itself, funny enough.

PHP’s Growth & Benefits
From its humble beginning, it proved to be a useful tool and grew rapidly. There are many reasons for the rapid growth:

• It’s free and open source. Everything you need to use PHP can be found for free.
• It’s fast. PHP loads quickly and is used by some of the biggest web sites in the world. When programmed correctly, it scales well and handles tens of thousands of users. It is just as powerful as other languages you might pay thousands of dollars for.
• It’s cross platform. It can be run on Windows, Macs, Linux and almost any other Unix operating system.
• It’s secure. When coded correctly, PHP is very secure. Anything this popular will have many developers dedicated to keeping it safe.
• It’s easy to learn. There is a vast amount of resources available for anyone wanting to learn PHP, like this web site. There are also tens of thousands of other developers you can ask for help.
• It’s fun. Learning to program will help you understand computers in a new way and being able to create your own applications can be a lot of fun, albeit challenging as well.
• It’s profitable. Many people have made a full career with PHP. As a software engineer, I use it more than any other “tool” in my toolbox when developing web applications.
• It has great documentation. The web site PHP.net (shown below) has amazing documentation. You can use the search feature to find out about specific functions and read helpful comments left by other programmers.

  (image of PHP.net)

Tags: computer, file, php, programming, tutorial