PHP History

In this tutorial, I am going to take you through the history of PHP: a modern-time, major website-driving programming language. Whether you're new to coding or just curious, I'll break down how PHP started, how it's grown, and what makes it a big deal in web development.

Let's get things rolling with some important events, starting with PHP's first release in 1994.

PHP/FI: A Release First Published in 1994

PHP's story started in 1994 when it first released, known as PHP/FI. It was created by this guy, Rasmus Lerdorf, to keep track of his visitors on his personal website—just a simple tool to begin with. The complete name was "Personal Home Page / Form Interpreter."

By that time, PHP wasn't a grown-up programming language yet, but basically, it could do dynamic Web pages, meaning you can change what is on your Web pages depending on what people do. And in '95, Lerdorf dropped PHP/FI 2, which added support for databases. That opened the door for making more complicated sites, and this first version set the stage for something much bigger.

Now, we come to the next big version of PHP.

PHP 3: The Big Leap in 1998

PHP really began to gain momentum in 1998 with the release of PHP 3. This was huge. Rasmus Lerdorf teamed up with two developers, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, to really take it to the next level.

Perhaps the most important change in PHP 3 was introduced by the Zend Engine, which should be fathomed as a huge performance enhancement—what PHP did sooner and could do more. In this version, PHP boomed to be very famous in the whole world and it became so crystal clear that all developers around the world were on board with it.

Next, let's see what PHP 4 brought to the table.

PHP 4: Faster and Better in 2000

In the year 2000, PHP 4 arrived, with Zend Engine 1.0 at its core. It was even more efficient and could support bigger and more elaborate websites. PHP 4 had access to added functions such as buffering output and managing sessions; it was ideal for anyone trying to produce absolutely dynamic websites, to change with different input, such as logging in and filling out forms.

PHP 4 became the go-to for creating dynamic web applications and helped to cement PHP as a major tool in the arsenal of most Web developers.

In the next section, we will delve into additional details about the subsequent version of PHP 5.

PHP 5: Object-orienting 2004

PHP 5 came into the scene in 2004, and man, was this version all about power. The big change it brought in was object-oriented programming, a lot of people refer to it as OOP. Now I am not going into too much detail about that, but basically OOP made it easier for developers to build larger and more complex websites that were easier to manage and fix.

PHP 5 also introduced Zend Engine II inside, which made everything smooth and more secure. Ultimately, this build made PHP a serious tool for building large web apps, ones that needed to handle a great amount of traffic or had tons of features.

Let’s move onto the following PHP version, which is PHP 7 in the section below.

PHP 7: All About Speed and Efficiency in 2015

PHP 7 was released in 2015, and it was all about speed. Sites on PHP 7 could load a whole lot faster, which is kind of a big deal when you are dealing with a lot of users. PHP 7 featured some really nice things like scalar type declarations, which will give you a little more control over the types you're dealing with, and made catching a lot of errors much easier.

This version really raised the bar in performance and made PHP one of the best choices for a developer who would want fast, sure websites.

PHP 8: More Features and Optimizations in 2020

PHP 8 was released in 2020, and further performance increases were realized with something called Just-In-Time compilation. Without getting too deep into the weeds, this basically made websites run even faster. It also introduced some new tools in making coding easier and more efficient.

With PHP 8, the language keeps moving forward to keep it relevant in the fast-moving world of today's Web development.

Anyway, let’s summarize.

Wrapping Up

In this tutorial, we explored—the history of PHP

PHP has been around since 1994, whereby it was much, much simpler and devised by Rasmus Lerdorf as a means of keeping track of who was accessing his personal web page. What started off as a pretty humble concept called PHP/FS, grew into so much more and became the basis for what today is known as PHP.

With time, it kept getting better. By 1995, PHP could even communicate with databases, thereby making websites functional. In 1998, when the launch of PHP 3 was released into the market, the language gained huge popularity globally, since it was much faster and power-packed as a result of the addition of something called the Zend Engine.

PHP 4 was released in 2000, which made all these websites even more functional. It remembered users and brought new tools for the developers in handling dynamic content.

Yet, that was not all. In 2004, PHP 5 came up with new programming features, bringing more speed and security. Then in 2015, PHP 7 showed up, making everything faster and much easier to use.

Every new version that came out of PHP made it stronger and perfect for web development. In fact, it is amazing to see how PHP grew from such a simple tool into what powers so many websites today. Who can know what's next for PHP? Let's learn more and see where that will take us!

Thank you for reading. Happy Coding!