We are a planet with over 8 billion population and are more than a million languages in the world, and more yet to be discovered. We use language in everything, living or nonliving. Similar to humans, computers also have their binary code to understand and transfer information. When a website is created, there are many languages used for transferring information and data. Today we will discuss one such language called PHP.
What is PHP?
There are many new languages which are created over the past decade in competition. PHP is in a different league itself. PHP is also known as Hypertext Preprocessor, was created over 25 years ago. This open-source server-side scripting was specifically used and created for web development in 1994. PHP is a widely used open-source general-purpose scripting language that was created and suited for web development. PHP can also be embedded into HTML.
Why use PHP?
PHP is an old scripting language and was created in the mid-’90s but it is not obsolete. There are many advanced scripting languages, and often talks about PHP being outdated, but the open-source scripting language is anything but obsolete. There are more than 80% of the websites in the world which used PHP as their scripting language, and it powers many popular websites such as WordPress and Facebook worldwide.
What are the advantages of PHP?
There are many scripting languages, but they are not highly approachable for web development as PHP. It is easy to use and learn, which makes it great for new users to explore the scripting languages. Here are some advantages of PHP:
Open-source
PHP is an open-source programming language, which allows developers to use it without paying for it. PHP frameworks are free, which makes building web applications faster and easier.
Independent
PHP works on various operating systems. It does not require any special software for web applications to render on the web browser. PHP has been used as a backend technology for various web applications on the internet.
Easy to learn
PHP was simple, easy to learn, and easy to maintain. The developers who have experience working with other programming languages will find PHP much easier and faster to work and with a unique set of working.
Database
PHP has various functions such as being used for the backend and can be easily connected to the database. PHP has been designed with specific capabilities to facilitate these connections in an efficient way and cater to the developers’ needs. PHP is also part of the widely popular LAMP stack.
Performance
PHP is quite efficient and with dealing with databases for creating performance web applications. PHP also allows the user to easily access with a below-average internet connection and loads websites at a commendable speed.
Security
Even though PHP was created years ago, it still has powerful built-in features and top-end tools to protect web applications from security threats, such as data tampering and forgery. MVC architecture is used to keep code clean and easily maintained.