The evolution of PHP has been a fascinating journey, from its humble beginnings as a personal home page scripting language to becoming one of the most widely used and powerful web development languages in the world. It all started in 1994 when Rasmus Lerdorf created a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts to track visitors to his online resume. He named it “Personal Home Page Tools” or PHP Tools for short. This simple tool gained popularity among web developers due to its ease of use and the fact that it was open-source, meaning anyone could contribute to its development. In 1997, two Israeli developers, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, rewrote the codebase and released PHP 3, introducing a new and improved language engine called the Zend Engine. This was a major milestone for PHP as it greatly improved its performance and allowed for the development of more complex and dynamic websites. With the release of PHP 4 in 2000, the language became even more popular as it introduced object-oriented programming (OOP) and improved support for databases. This made it a more attractive option for building dynamic websites and web applications. However, it was with the release of PHP 5 in 2004 that the language truly evolved into a powerful web development tool. It introduced many new features such as improved OOP support, XML parsing, and better error handling. This version also saw the introduction of the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension, making it easier to work with databases. In the following years, PHP continued to grow and evolve, with constant updates and improvements being made to the language. Today, PHP powers over 80% of all websites on the internet, including popular platforms like WordPress, Facebook, and Wikipedia. Its success can be attributed to its simplicity, versatility, and the strong community of developers constantly working to improve it. From its humble beginnings as a personal home page tool, PHP has transformed into a powerful and essential language for web development. Its evolution is a testament to the ever-changing nature of technology and the endless possibilities for growth and improvement.