PHP programming language is used mainly in the development of websites and web applications, namely in the backend.
All the sites we see on the Internet consist of two parts: the frontend and the backend. What the user sees – animations, sliders, drop-down menus, and more – is the frontend. Designers draw the layout of the site and developers turn it into HTML, CSS and JavaScript code.
At the backend level, the platform itself is created, which links the site to the backend server systems, processes user requests, communicates with the database and passes the results to the frontend. It is for creating the backend and the PHP language is used.
Why PHP continues to be popular and relevant
PHP language is more than 20 years old. It was invented in 1994 by the Danish Rasmus Lerdorf as an add-on to display the number of visits to his personal web page. At the time, he called it simply Personal Home Page.
The language is constantly evolving. In 2004, PHP 5 was released, which achieved great popularity among web developers because of its good implementation of OOP. In December 2015, the seventh version was released, which made it possible to create faster programs. PHP 8 appeared in November 2020, and version 8.2 is scheduled for release on November 24, 2022.
According to W3Techs, the proportion of web sites with a PHP backend is about 80%. This is primarily due to the fact that it is written on the popular CMS WordPress and Drupal. In addition, written in PHP “Facebook” *, “VKontakte”, the search engine Yahoo, Wikipedia, quite a few Google services and the domestic CMS “1C-Bitrix”.
PHP is often taught from scratch because it has a very low entry threshold. In as little as a month of training, you’ll be writing small websites. And later, as you develop your skills, you can work on high-load systems for large companies.
Despite the fact that PHP for the past ten years, predicted the imminent death, it remains the most in-demand programming language. The proportion of jobs that require knowledge of PHP is 24.6%. Approximately the same amount is taken by Java with 24.1%. And the third most popular C# lags far behind at 9.8%.