What Is PHP and What Does It Mean?
PHP stood for Personal Homepage when it was first coined. But today it stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, which is a recursive acronym. (It’s recursive because the initial word is an abbreviation; therefore, the abbreviation’s complete meaning isn’t conveyed.)
PHP was released for the first time 26 years ago, and it is now in version 8, launched in November 2020. However, version 7 is still the most popular.
The Zend engine is the most widely used implementation of PHP. Other deployments include a parrot, HPVM (Hip Hop Virtual Machine), and Hip Hop, built by Facebook.
PHP is mostly used to create web servers. It works in the browser and may also be launched from the command line. You can see your code output in the terminal if you don’t want to show it on the browser.
PHP’s Advantages
PHP has several features that have helped it become so successful, and it’s been the language of choice for web servers for almost 15 years. Here are a few of PHP’s advantages:
Platform Independence: PHP is platform agnostic. You don’t need a specific operating system to utilise it because it works on all platforms, including Mac, Windows, and Linux.
PHP is a free and open-source programming language, and everyone who wishes to develop on top of the original code can do so. One of the reasons why one of its frameworks, Laravel, is so popular.
PHP is a simple language to learn for complete novices. If you already know how to programme, you’ll be able to take it up quickly.
PHP connects to all databases: PHP connects to all relational and non-relational databases with ease. As a result, it can quickly connect to MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, or any other database.
PHP has a very active online community that is quite helpful. The official literature includes instructions on how to utilise the features, so you can quickly resolve your issue if you get stuck.
Who Makes Use of PHP?
Several well-known organisations and IT behemoths use PHP to run their servers and create amazing things.
Facebook: Facebook’s website is powered by PHP. As a result, the firm gave back to the community by releasing Hip Hop for PHP, a PHP implementation.
CMSs (Content Management Systems): WordPress, the most popular content management system globally, is written in PHP. PHP is also used to create content management systems like Drupal, Joomla, and Magento. Shopify is also based on PHP.
Web Hosting Platforms: Many web hosting platforms, like BlueHost, Siteground, and Whogohost, use PHP to run their servers.
Is PHP on its Last Leg?
There are many discussions these days about whether PHP is on the decline or not. This is due to the introduction and growing popularity of alternative server-side languages such as JavaScript (Node JS), Python, Golang, etc.