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12 things you need to know about PHP

By admin | September 2, 2008

Are you still thinking that PHP is an web-only language or is “not a real language”? Well, that used to be true with PHP 2.0, but with PHP5, it’s not so true anymore. Here are 12 things you need to know about PHP:

  1. PHP is not only for the web. PHP used to be only a web module or a CGI script, but that has since changed, since with the PHP CLI and the PHP-GTK2 binding. See #3 and #4.
  2. PHP is a real language. Despite the myths, PHP is an actual programming language. This is a very bad myth, since when someone asks for help on PHP in a forum or a mailing list, they will get a reply like “get a real language like C”. PHP is just as real as any other programming language.
  3. PHP can be used to write command line (DOS/Bash) scripts. Using the PHP CLI, one can write command line PHP scripts just like C or Java.
  4. PHP can be used to write graphical applications. Using the PHP-GTK2 binding, one can write graphical PHP applications.
  5. PHP can be used to write OpenGL applications. Although this appears to be experimental, one can actually write applications that use OpenGL using php-opengl.
  6. PHP is not a language with security holes. Most cases of PHP and bad security are because of poorly written scripts that rely on insecure programming practices (such as register_globals).
  7. PHP is not a languang without OOP (object oriented programming). Read PHP’s page on PHP5 object oriented programming – you will see that it is like most other OOP implementations.
  8. PHP is not a typeless language. Despite rumors, PHP is a typed language (even though it is not strongly typed). See PHP’s types page for more info.
  9. PHP is a free and open source language. The PHP interpreter is released under the free PHP License. If you don’t like the PHP License version, then use the LGPL’d version by Roadsend PHP.
  10. PHP can be used to write web robots (bots). Using cURL, PHP’s built-in www functions or the http class, one can write web robots with PHP too.
  11. PHP is not an ancient language. It is fairly modern, and is 4th generation too.
  12. PHP is not useless.

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Topics: PHP | 16 Comments »

16 Responses to “12 things you need to know about PHP”

  1. Kesavan Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 01:53

    Thanks guy, Really good job

  2. esakipandi Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 07:27

    Really helpful for me to know many things about php

  3. 12 cosas que necesitas saber acerca PHP « Sonido Libre Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 20:45

    […] mi mailing list de PHPClasses me topo con un artículo interesante en inglés llamado “12 things you need to know about PHP” en un blog llamado Compdigitec Labs. Entonces decidí traducirlo al español y ponerlo aquí […]

  4. keogh Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 20:53

    Nice, I will translate it and put it on my blog.

  5. keogh Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 20:54

    It’s on Spanish at http://sonidolibre.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/12-cosas-que-necesitas-saber-acerca-php/

    s4lu2

  6. Adrian Says:
    January 14th, 2010 at 06:52

    I use PHP-CLI constantly for scripting and file conversion etc. I don’t know of a faster way to code jobs like that.

    I agree that it’s now a fully-featured language. Another thing worth mentioning is that it’s AMAZINGLY FAST. OK I haven’t benchmarked it against C but I know for file extraction type jobs it beats bash and Linux commands like cut hands down.

    I really don’t like languages that have bolted OO on, but by PHP5 it’s become ‘proper’ OO, and in practice nasty mixes of non-OO code and a few objects can work perfectly well for these tasks.

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