PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages, designed specifically for Web application development.

PHP’s eclectic syntax draws upon C, Java, and Perl, and it is quite easy to learn and deploy. SourceLabs includes PHP in its Self Support for Linux and Open Source Java offering.

PHP or LAMP based applications are also considered to be extremely scalable, as the language discourages sharing state – to scale PHP applications often all that is needed is more server capacity.

PHP was originally invented as a set of Perl scripts released by Rasmus Lerdorf. Over the years the project evolved was eventually essentially taken over by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, who completely rewrote the engine behind PHP and later formed a company, Zend, that currently leads the development of said engine.

PHP is an extremely lax and loose scripting language, which has triggered a great deal of criticism from developers who fault it for its loose typing and inconsistent naming conventions. Other issues with the language include issues with legacy features that are now recommended to be turned off, such as ‘register globals’, and a lack of native unicode support.

PHP5

PHP has progressed a great deal since its inception, and the newest version, PHP5, currently offers object oriented programming features as well as XML and SOAP support. PHP5 represents a large step forward for PHP, however it is not completely backwards compatible with PHP4 and many web hosting companies do not support it.

For more on object oriented programming, see Object Oriented PHP.