PHP, which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, is a popular open-source programming language used for web development. However, the journey of PHP began long back in the mid-1990s, when it was just a set of simple scripts used for creating personal home pages. Created by Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP was originally called “Personal Home Page Tools” and was primarily used for maintaining his own website. However, with the increasing demand for dynamic and interactive websites, the scope of PHP expanded and it evolved into a powerful programming language. The release of PHP version 3 in 1998 marked a significant milestone in its evolution, as it introduced a new and improved architecture, making it suitable for building large-scale web applications. This version also introduced the Zend engine, which improved the performance and stability of PHP. In the early 2000s, with the rise of e-commerce and online businesses, PHP gained even more popularity and became the go-to language for web development. The release of PHP 4 in 2000 brought in more advanced features such as support for object-oriented programming, making it more versatile and robust. However, with the ever-changing landscape of web development, PHP needed to keep up with the latest trends and technologies. This led to the release of PHP 5 in 2004, which included major improvements such as a new memory manager, improved error handling, and support for XML. This version also introduced the concept of namespaces, making it easier to organize and reuse code. In the following years, PHP continued to evolve with the release of PHP 7 in 2015, which brought in significant performance improvements and better support for modern web development techniques such as reactive programming. Today, PHP is used by millions of developers worldwide and powers some of the most popular websites and applications on the internet. Its evolution from a simple set of scripts to a powerful programming language is a testament to its adaptability and continuous development. With the recent release of PHP 8 in 2020, which includes features such as just-in-time compilation and union types, the future of PHP looks even more promising. As technology continues to advance, we can only expect PHP to evolve further and remain a prominent language in the world of web development.