PHP, which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, is a popular scripting language used for web development. However, it didn’t start out that way. In the early 1990s, a Danish-Canadian programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf created a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts to track visitors to his online resume. He called it “Personal Home Page Tools” or PHP Tools for short. These scripts were written in the C programming language and were used to add dynamic features to websites. As the internet grew in popularity, so did PHP. In 1995, Lerdorf released the source code for PHP Tools and it quickly gained a following among web developers. However, it was not yet a programming language in its own right. That changed in 1997 when two developers, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, rewrote the core of PHP and released it as a separate language called “PHP/FI”. This new version included features such as support for databases and better memory management. It also paved the way for the creation of the PHP Hypertext Processor engine, or PHP engine, which is still used today. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, PHP gained even more popularity due to its ease of use and compatibility with various web servers and operating systems. It was also open-source, meaning that anyone could contribute to its development and use it for free. This led to a large and active community of developers constantly improving and expanding the language. In 2004, the release of PHP 5 brought even more significant changes, including a new object-oriented programming (OOP) model, improved error handling, and enhanced support for web services. This solidified PHP’s place as a powerful and versatile programming language, used by major companies and organizations such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and WordPress. Today, PHP continues to evolve and improve with each new release, with a focus on performance, security, and modern web development practices. From its humble beginnings as a set of simple scripts, PHP has become one of the most widely used and influential programming languages in the world. Its evolution is a testament to the power of open-source community collaboration and the ever-changing landscape of technology.