It’s no exaggeration to say that PHP is today one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and the toolkit of choice for millions of Web application developers across the planet. According to recent statistics, the language is in use on more than 22 million Web sites and a third of the world’s Web servers—no small feat, especially when you consider that PHP is developed and maintained entirely by a worldwide community of volunteers with no commercial backing whatsoever! The reasons for PHP’s popularity are not hard to understand. It’s scalable, easily available, and plays well with third-party software. It uses clear, simple syntax and delights in non-obfuscated code, making it easy to learn and use and encouraging rapid application development. And it has a massive advantage over commercial programming toolkits, because it’s available free of charge for a variety of platforms and architectures, including UNIX, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS, under an open-source license.
Developers too report high levels of satisfaction with PHP. In an August 2009 study often scripting languages by Evans Data Corporation, PHP developers had the highest user satisfaction levels (followed closely by Ruby and Python users). In particular, PHP ranked highest for cross-platform compatibility, availability and quality of tools, and performance, and second highest for maintainability and readability, extensibility, ease of use, and security. For organizations and independent developers, all these facts add up to just one thing: Using PHP saves both money and time. Building applications with PHP costs less, because the language can be used for a variety of purposes without payment of licensing fees or investment in expensive hardware or software. And using PHP also reduces development time without sacrificing quality, because of the easy availability of ready-made, robust, and communitytested widgets and extensions that developers can use to painlessly add new functions to the language.
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