Have a Summer Romance with PHP

Choosing a programming language for your Web project can be difficult; there are many languages to choose from, each with their pros and cons. It is possible to develop a solution to for your Web project in any language; Ruby, PHP, Perl, Java -- each has its place. We often choose to develop projects in PHP. Here’s why.

PHP is lightweight, both in terms of basic groundwork to make a script run and actual running processes. There isn't a lot of overhead to get a PHP-based site up and running. It is trivial to make Web servers run PHP files: there is no framework that has to be installed or initialized, as is the case with Rails or Struts. Deployment of a PHP application in a PHP program is as simple as dropping a file in a Web-accessible directory. Provided you have modeled your project correctly, this also makes surgical code changes far easier, because one may fix a bug or add a feature in one particular file without needing to cascade the change through multiple associated files.

The key to that ability is the server support PHP enjoys. For example, telling Apache to run PHP is as simple as enabling a module and reloading the Apache configuration. In addition, because of that server support not only is one processing PHP applications efficiently, but should one require greater efficiency there are several options for code optimization, caching, and other speed improvements. Lastly, because it is a widely recognized and supported, vendor-supplied security updates are readily available.

Community Support

Because this language is supported in many environments, quite a lot of code has been written, add-ons developed, and a community of developers emerged. PHP does not require any framework to be useful, however should one require a prebuilt solution there are many options ranging from complete content management systems to standalone libraries to modular frameworks that duplicate some of the strengths of other languages, such as Ruby and Java. The PHP community is robust, vocal, and prolific.

And the reason there is so much code to share and reuse is that PHP is easy to learn. The syntax is based on C, which seems to have become the vanilla of programming language syntax over the years. Jumping into a basic PHP program is relatively easy for anyone who has experience with any other language. This makes finding collaborators and bringing new hires up to speed on a project fairly painless.

PHP has shown itself to be a valuable tool in our arsenal. When it is used in its proper context, it is always a happy thing.

Posted by Jonathan Warner, Developer