PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. It started out as a simple tool for tracking visits to his online resume and was known as “Personal Home Page.” However, as the internet continued to grow and become more complex, it became clear that this language had potential far beyond its original purpose. In 1995, Lerdorf released the source code for PHP and it quickly gained popularity among web developers. The first official version of PHP was released in 1997 and was known as PHP/FI (Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter). This marked the beginning of PHP’s evolution into a full-fledged programming language.
Over the years, PHP continued to improve and evolve with the help of a growing community of developers. In 1998, two Israeli programmers, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, rewrote the PHP parser, which resulted in a significant increase in performance and allowed for the creation of more complex web applications. This new version, known as PHP 3, was released in 1998 and was a major turning point for the language.
In the early 2000s, the popularity of PHP continued to grow as more and more developers began using it for web development. The release of PHP 4 in 2000 introduced new features such as support for object-oriented programming and improved performance, making it a more powerful and versatile language. This version also marked the beginning of PHP’s widespread use in the development of dynamic websites.
In 2004, the PHP community released PHP 5, which included significant improvements and new features such as improved error handling, a new object model, and improved support for XML. This version solidified PHP’s position as one of the most popular programming languages for web development.
However, with the rise of other programming languages such as Ruby and Python, PHP faced some criticism for its lack of modern features and its sometimes messy and inconsistent syntax. In response, the PHP community released PHP 7 in 2015, which addressed many of these concerns and introduced significant performance improvements. This version also marked the beginning of a more structured and organized development process for PHP.
Today, PHP is used by millions of websites and powers some of the largest and most popular websites on the internet, including Facebook and Wikipedia. Its evolution from a simple tool for personal use to a widely used programming language has been a remarkable journey. With the release of PHP 8 in 2020, which includes features such as just-in-time compilation and improved error handling, it is clear that the evolution of PHP is far from over.
