PHP: where is the road?

PHP: where is the road? PHP4: behind the miracle

In 1995, Rasmus was using PHP to write his personal homepage. Today, PHP has become a popular scripting language around the world, and more sites choose to use PHP, even Yahoo gave up its own script and switched to PHP to support its website. It can be said that PHP is a miracle. I always think that there is a reason behind any miracle. Now let's look at the success of PHP through this miracle.

1. easy to use

PHP has a low entry threshold and has minimal user requirements. People who have learned the C language have almost no time to use PHP. Their syntax is so similar that I often wonder if I can change it to PHP by adding $ Before the C language variable. This allows a large number of C programmers to select PHP in their web scripts. In addition, compared to the ASP component system and the huge Java Class Library, PHP function libraries are much easier to learn. In terms of programming style, PHP is even more free. you can use N styles to write your script programs. These features make PHP the preferred language for beginners. It is an important strategy to seize the market for beginners. Just as anyone may remember their first love, people often have deep feelings for the language they first learned. Even if I grew up later and switched to another language, I still remember the language I first learned. At this point, PHP has done a great job.

2. proper tailoring

The PHP development team is a group of people who know the Internet the most, and they know exactly what the user wants. PHP is an excellent web scripting language, and it is just a web scripting language. The function set provided by PHP is quite powerful in terms of network and focuses on network applications. Such features as component-less File upload in PHP and support of over many databases all show this feature. By the way, PHP even supports ACCESS databases. Focus on making PHP excellent performance on the network. Gains and losses.

3. powerful support

PHP has powerful OpenSource group support and tens of thousands of open source codes are available on the network. You can integrate several existing programs to implement your application, or analyze master-level code to improve your application. PHP also has many extensibility projects to Enhance PHP functions in some aspects. For example, PEAR, which focuses on programming standardization and code reuse, provides Smarty that can compile the template technology, and even develops GTK for desktop programs.

After analyzing these reasons, we can see that the success of PHP has benefited from the strategic vision of the PHP development team. PHP provides a minimal working set, allowing users to efficiently complete their desired applications in the simplest way. This is exactly what beginners need. Then it provides various solutions through convenient extension. in this way, you only need to learn what you want to use in that field. When you are involved in more and more fields, your level will also increase. when you are familiar with most fields, you will find that you are on the mountainside without knowing it. PHP also provides a learning attitude.


ASP.net + J2EE: Storm

Microsoft's ASP.net was the first to launch an innovative wave in the web scripting field. What is attractive in ASP.net ?? Event-driven mechanism. This is a common concept in desktop programming. in script programming, event-driven means scripts (such as PHP, JSP, and ASP) on the server) it is encapsulated with client scripts (such as javascript and VbScript) to work together. In this way, programming becomes very convenient. In. in the. net environment, event-driven has another advantage: you may not even use any server-side scripts or client-side scripts, because in ASP.net, C # can be directly used ?? You do not need to add $. This paved the way for traditional programmers in the MS camp to switch to network development. at the same time, it also caused a great blow to PHP in the beginner's market. It is foreseeable that the transformation of traditional programmers to PHP will be greatly reduced in the future. However, the biggest problem with ASP.net is that it can only run on Windows, and now the Chinese mainland is vigorously developing Linux. This makes PHP's living space seem a little wider, ?? Let's take a look at Java.

Java is also a miracle. The first version was released in 1995. now it has three versions, covering three main application fields: Embedded System (J2se) desktop program (J2se) and server (J2ee. More importantly, Java has been recognized by the vast majority of programmers. Currently, the world's most outstanding computer books are mostly C ++ or Java as the descriptive language. Java has become a belief almost like C. Therefore, we should not think that programmers in the Java camp will switch to PHP. At the same time, PHP has lost many advantages in the face of open-source and cross-platform Java. JSP in J2ee puts a lot of pressure on PHP in the beginner's market.

The beginner's market, ease of use, and open-source support that once succeeded in PHP are all challenged. as the machine performance continues to improve and everyone's requirements for efficiency gradually decrease, we can say that, it is not easy for PHP to survive and grow in the slit of ASP.net and J2EE.

PHP has many problems. There are too many low-level users. A large number of developers are at the entry stage and do not know how to improve themselves, resulting in a large number of open-source code non-standard and low efficiency, and the next batch of beginners will learn from these bad code, so recursion. On the other hand, high-end users have to switch to other languages to develop large applications due to incomplete object-oriented features of PHP.


PHP5: strong coffee flavor

In the middle of this year, the PHP development team released PHP5's BETA1, from which we can see PHP's counterattack. First, the development of PHP4 is still uninterrupted, and we can be sure that the development of PHP4 will continue for a long time. This aims to consolidate existing users and gradually integrate some new features of PHP5 in the future PHP4 version to achieve a smooth transition from PHP4 to PHP5.

Let's look at the changes in PHP5. In PHP5, we see too many Java shadows. The OO system is almost a COPY of Java, which ensures that PHP high-end users are not lost, so that they can easily use the latest technical system to architecture their own applications. On the other hand, it also provides convenience for Java programmers to use PHP, although this may be rare. After improving the OO system, PHP has the ability to truly enter the enterprise-level market. Then, PHP5 also adds many of its own things, such as _ get, to make the system easier to use. I don't know. Will this cappuccino be as popular as Java?

From the changes in PHP5, we can see the future direction of PHP. First, compete with JSP, and strive to replace JSP in some aspects to become the glue for binding JavaBeans and Servlet. This requires a closer relationship between PHP and Java. The Zend team is participating in the JSR specification designation. This specification allows you to directly create a Java object in PHP and call its method. In this way, PHP can quickly enter the enterprise-level market. In addition, if PHP scripts can be directly compiled into Bytecode and run on the Jvm, PHP will have a lot of prospects. Another direction is integration between Java and. net to integrate existing resources in some large applications. In PHP4, we can call com components and Java objects. we believe PHP5 will provide more support in the future.

In any case, whether it is competition with J2ee or. net or integration, PHP is going to be a treasure Road. However, since PHP has gone through the storm, why don't we believe it can go further?