Catchy title, eh? I have to admit, I used a bit of an inflammatory title to pull you into the rest of the post, but I think you’ll like what I have to say. The title is true, but probably not in teh way you think. No, PHP is not going to be the language that comes out on top, not the “one language to rule them all” sort of thing. Instead, I’m proposing that PHP, the flexible and powerful language that it is, has a very large roll to fill in the future of the web.
There’s lots of little things that the language has done along its life to help make the world wide web a better place to live. Most importantly it’s given the world an Open Source alternative to some of the other closed languages that some of the major companies of the world offer (okay, so I’m pretty transparent). PHP packs a lot of power in a little package, and the general developer community has definitely taken notice. This plucky little language that started as a handy tool for Rasmus to keep track of things in his personal pages has evolved into something that major companies around the world are implementing into their core software. Hear that? *Core* software. PHP isn’t some fly-by-night language that’s the latest fad being passed around like so many YouTube videos. PHP is strong, its powerful and it is most definitely here to stay.
But I digress…let’s get back to the point that the title of this post was trying to make. PHP is the future. No really, it is - trust me on this. Of course, there’s a difference between being the only path to the future and one of many means to getting there, but we’ll toss that aside for now. We want to focus on PHP and what it can do to make all three Ws in the WWW a better place to develop.
So, lets talk a little bit about what PHP has to offer to the world at large.
From its humblest of beginnings, one of the core values of the PHP project has been to provide the most power in the best code possible. Sure, it has its quirks and it can be a little rough around the edges, but line of code for code, PHP packs some serious features into a neat little package. There’s even the extension system that makes it super easy to add in new bits of functionality without even having to recompile the main engine. Oh, and did I mention it’s free? Open Source, well supported and very very popular among both the usual Open Source crowd and among other certain large entities (even those that might live in Redmond)
Every time I look the future of the web (linking services, making things seamless, integrating technologies), I can see PHP at every major crossroads. Its the flexibility of the language that does it. Sure, there’s still a bit of a niche that PHP fits into, but once you take a step out of that safe little shell, you really start to realize what the language has to offer and where it fits in the world. PHP has the potential for being the glue that binds the web together. There’ll always be other languages out there - to dismiss them would just be silly - but PHP, with its flexibility and power really has the feature set to help propel Open Source web development into the spotlight and shine for what it is.
The web needs a language that’s quick to adapt, easy to configure, comes in at a low cost and is popular enough to find good, talented developers for (yup, that’s a big point too). If you ask me, PHP fits all the above and more.
I believe that PHP can be the future of the web and be a key player in the web applications to come.
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