PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, has come a long way since its inception in 1994. It all started with Rasmus Lerdorf, a Danish-Canadian programmer, creating a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts for his personal website. These scripts were called “Personal Home Page Tools” and were used to track visitors and display his resume and other personal information. The first version of PHP, known as PHP/FI, was released in 1995 and was a simple tool for creating dynamic web pages. It gained popularity among web developers due to its ease of use and ability to interact with databases. However, it wasn’t until 1997 when two developers, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, rewrote the codebase and introduced the Zend Engine, that PHP became a more robust and powerful programming language. This new version, known as PHP3, was the first to be widely adopted and used for creating dynamic websites. In 1999, the fourth version of PHP, PHP4, was released with added features such as improved object-oriented programming and support for multiple languages. This version became the most widely used and helped solidify PHP’s place as one of the top programming languages for web development. In 2004, PHP5 was released with a revamped object-oriented model and support for XML and web services. This version also introduced the concept of namespaces, making it easier for developers to organize their code. In 2012, PHP5.4 was released with features such as traits and closures, making it even more powerful and efficient. This was followed by the release of PHP5.5 in 2013, which added support for generators and finally brought full support for object-oriented programming. The most recent version, PHP7, was released in 2015 and brought significant performance improvements and new features such as scalar type declarations and anonymous classes. Today, PHP is used by over 79% of all websites and continues to evolve and improve as a popular programming language. From its humble beginnings as a tool for personal websites to becoming the go-to language for web development, PHP has come a long way in its 27 years of existence and shows no signs of slowing down.