{"id":6905,"date":"2022-07-21T11:16:38","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T09:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bart.sk\/en\/?p=6905"},"modified":"2022-11-24T14:10:05","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T13:10:05","slug":"php-still-top-almost-30-years-old-language-top-popularity-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bart.sk\/en\/php-still-top-almost-30-years-old-language-top-popularity-rankings\/","title":{"rendered":"PHP is still TOP \u2013 Why Is an Almost 30-Years-Old Language at the Top of Popularity Rankings?"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to W3Techs statistics, PHP is still the most widely used<\/b> server-side programming language. In almost 30 years of its existence, it has climbed to version 8.1, and thanks to great documentation, it has gained the appreciation of millions of programmers who now form a community helping each other. It includes us \u2013 PHP is a daily part of our lives and we decided to pay tribute to it with a mini series of blogs about why and where we use it. <\/b><\/p>\n

\"PHP<\/a>
https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/2Rd-hwT2xQ0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is PHP?<\/b><\/h3>\n

PHP [1], or <\/span>Hypertext Preprocessor<\/b> in full, is a scripting language used primarily to create web applications. PHP is run exclusively on the server side, where various actions take place, such as computing and generating HTML code. In most cases, this code is then sent to the client, where it’s also rendered. Sometimes a server response can be sent in the form of an object representing the necessary data.<\/span><\/p>\n

This scripting language was created in <\/span>1994<\/b> and its author is <\/span>Rasmus Lerdorf<\/b>, who designed it to resemble languages like C or Perl, because the developers of the systems\/applications for whom the new language was intended, used these [2]. After all, it’s easier to learn things that are at least a little familiar to us (author’s note: applies to everything :D). The latest major version of PHP at the time of writing this post (July 2022) is <\/span>PHP 8.1<\/b> [3].<\/span><\/p>\n

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Popularity and use<\/b><\/h3>\n

Despite its age and constantly evolving new technologies, PHP is still at the forefront of web application development today. This is also evidenced by the W3Techs statistics, according to which as of the current date (July 2022) the PHP language dominates the<\/span> server-side ranking of programming languages with <\/span>77.6%<\/b> [4].<\/span><\/p>\n

\"PHP<\/a>
The ranking of the use of server-side programming languages for the development of web applications [4].<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>Even after almost 30 years from the beginning, there are several benefits to such use. The main one is a large community of developers who help solve various problems or propose alternative solutions, for example, on the (certainly familiar for you) portal<\/span> Stack Overflow<\/span><\/a>. Another advantage is the number of software frameworks that have been developed, but this is a big topic that we’ll perhaps look at later.<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you’re a developer, you’ll surely also appreciate clear<\/span> documentation<\/span><\/a> with code samples to help you understand the given functionality faster. PHP itself is a simple (moderately demanding at most ?) and at the same time full-featured programming language that can do a lot \u2013 just look at the documentation?. But now we can only guess what future major versions of PHP will bring.<\/span><\/p>\n

It will probably come as no surprise when that we also use PHP in <\/span>bart.sk<\/b> on several projects where we actively work and improve them.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Usage options<\/b><\/h3>\n

What are the possibilities of PHP, or what we use it for (of course, it changes from project to project, but these are the most common cases):<\/span><\/p>\n