History of PHP language: How PHP Started and Where It Stands Today

History of PHP language

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that is used in web development. It was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. At that time, Lerdorf was a very famous Danish Canadian programmer. The mascot of PHP is an elephant, was designed by Vincent Pointier in 1998. If you put an outline on it, then something similar is the idea behind making the PHP logo an elephant. Over time, many variations of this mascot were made, but ultimately the original variant was adopted.

Early Development of PHP

PHP developers started in 1994 when Lord of Personal Web Programming was looking at some CGI programs using the C programming language. He created these programs to manage his personal home base. He called it PHP, the language for creating relative personal home pages. But he extended this work and named it PHP Personal Homepage. That PHP, which we know today as a very famous programming language.

Growth and Popularity

After this, PHP started being used to create simple dynamic web applications, and Lerdorf launched the first version of PHP in 1995. In this release, the basic functionalities of PHP were already present, some tools for form handling were there, and PHP had its own syntax. Many web developers benefited from this release. Its simple and limited consistent syntax increased developers' love for it, and people started having very positive vibes about PHP, which led them to start editing PHP.

From there, PHP evolution started growing rapidly. At that time, the craze for PHP was very high. People saw PHP in such a way that backend development had become very easy. The surprising thing is that Lerdorf never created PHP as a programming language. Due to its popularity and speed, it became so simple that after using PHP, people did not want to switch to another language.

Formation of PHP Development Team

After PHP's massive growth, Lerdorf once said, "I don’t know how to stop this. It is something that is growing in a positive direction. I never intended to create a programming language." These were some of Lerdorf's words. In November 1997, a development team was set up to work on the further development of PHP. As I told you, PHP never grew as a programming language, so a lot of inconsistencies came in its syntax and function names. Because of this, a development team was needed, and a standard was needed to standardize all these things. In 1997, Gutmans started working on PHP 3, and it was released in 1998. In 2000, PHP 4 was released, and its development continued after this.

Major PHP Versions

Version	Release Date	End of Support	Notable Features
1.0	June 8, 1995	N/A	Initial release named "Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools)."
2.0	April 16, 1996	N/A	Improved performance and introduced basic functionality for dynamic web pages.
3.0	June 6, 1998	October 20, 2000	Complete rewrite by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans; established PHP as a standalone language.
4.0	May 22, 2000	June 23, 2001	Introduced the Zend Engine, enhancing performance and adding support for more complex applications.
4.1	December 10, 2001	March 12, 2002	Added 'superglobals' ($_GET, $_POST, $_SESSION, etc.) for improved global variable handling.
4.2	April 22, 2002	September 6, 2002	Disabled register_globals by default to enhance security.
4.3	December 27, 2002	March 31, 2005	Introduced the Command Line Interface (CLI) for scripting purposes.
4.4	July 11, 2005	August 7, 2008	Added man pages for phpize and php-config scripts.
5.0	July 13, 2004	September 5, 2005	Introduced Zend Engine II with a new object model and added support for exceptions.
5.1	November 24, 2005	August 24, 2006	Improved performance and introduced the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension for database access.
5.2	November 2, 2006	January 6, 2011	Enabled the filter extension by default and added native JSON support.
5.3	June 30, 2009	August 14, 2014	Added support for namespaces, late static bindings, and introduced closures.
5.4	March 1, 2012	September 3, 2015	Introduced traits, a shortened array syntax, and a built-in web server for development.
5.5	June 20, 2013	July 21, 2016	Added generators, the finally keyword for exception handling, and integrated the OPcache extension.
5.6	August 28, 2014	December 31, 2018	Introduced constant scalar expressions, variadic functions, and the exponentiation operator (**).
7.0	December 3, 2015	December 3, 2018	Major performance improvements with Zend Engine 3; added scalar type declarations and return type declarations.
7.1	December 1, 2016	December 1, 2019	Added nullable types, void return type, and class constant visibility modifiers.
7.2	November 30, 2017	November 30, 2020	Introduced the object type hint and added the Sodium library for modern cryptography.
7.3	December 6, 2018	December 6, 2021	Added flexible heredoc and nowdoc syntax, and improved JSON error handling.
7.4	November 28, 2019	November 28, 2022	Introduced typed properties, arrow functions, and preloading for improved performance.
8.0	November 26, 2020	November 26, 2023	Added Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, union types, and named arguments.
8.1	November 25, 2021	December 31, 2025	Introduced enums, readonly properties, and fibers for better asynchronous programming.
8.2	December 8, 2022	December 31, 2026	Added readonly classes, standalone null, false, and true types, and deprecated dynamic properties.
8.3	November 23, 2023	December 31, 2027	Introduced typed class constants, the json_validate() function, and deep cloning for readonly properties.
8.4	November 21, 2024	December 31, 2028	Added property hooks, asymmetric visibility for properties, and lazy objects.

PHP 6 was never officially released due to various issues during its development.

These are the References of the table:

• End of Life Dates
• Official PHP Releases

PHP 4 was based on the Zend Engine. Later, PHP 5 was released with an updated version of the Zend Engine 2. Work on PHP 5 started in July 2004. PHP 5 was considered revolutionary because it introduced Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and PHP Data Objects (PDO), which were new and highly useful features at that time. Developers were very excited about PHP 5.

After 2018, PHP 5 stopped receiving security updates. PHP 6 experimented with Unicode support, but it was never officially released. As a result, PHP 6 never came into existence. Work on PHP 7 began between 2014 and 2015. A debate arose among developers on whether to name it PHP 6 or PHP 7, since PHP 6 was never officially released. Finally, PHP 7 was released.

In 2020, PHP 8 was released as a stable version. However, PHP's popularity started declining. Developers began criticizing PHP, which led to significant improvements. A JIT compiler was added, and modern programming features were incorporated to keep PHP competitive with modern languages.

PHP Syntax Overview

Let’s see how PHP’s syntax is written and how PHP is actually coded.
The "Hello World" program in PHP is written like this:

<?php
echo "Hello, World!";
?>

PHP Comments

Comments exist in PHP. A comment means that any text you put inside your PHP file will not be executed.

For single-line comments, you will use this:

// This is a single-line comment

For multi-line comments, you can use this method if you want to see your comment in multiple lines:

/*
This is a
multi-line comment
in PHP
*/

Variables in PHP

Variables are like containers that store information.

The variables in PHP can be created like this:

<?php
$name = "John";
$age = 25;
echo "Name: $name, Age: $age";
?>

Predefined Variables in PHP

PHP has predefined variables like $_GET, $_POST, $_SESSION, and $_COOKIE, which are used to handle user input, sessions, and cookies.

Strings in PHP

A string is a sequence of characters, and in PHP, a string can be created like this:

<?php
$string = "Hello, PHP!";
echo $string;
?>

Integers and Floats in PHP

Numbers can be used for arithmetic operations in PHP, and you can perform arithmetic operations on variables like this:

<?php
$num1 = 10;
$num2 = 20;
$sum = $num1 + $num2;
echo "Sum: $sum";
?>

If you want to print information from any variable in PHP, you can use the "echo" function like this:

<?php
$message = "Welcome to PHP!";
echo $message;
?>

This will print all the simple information you provide.

Arrays in PHP

Arrays can be created in PHP like this:

<?php
$colors = array("Red", "Green", "Blue");
echo $colors[0]; // Output: Red
?>

Conditional Statements in PHP

In PHP, you can use conditional statements.
You can use "if" statements to execute a condition like this:

<?php
$age = 18;
if ($age >= 18) {
    echo "You are eligible to vote.";
}
?>

And if you want to write an "else" statement in PHP, it looks like this:

<?php
$age = 16;
if ($age >= 18) {
    echo "You are eligible to vote.";
} else {
    echo "You are not eligible to vote.";
}
?>

PHP supports switch statements, and the syntax is like this:

<?php
$day = "Monday";
switch ($day) {
    case "Monday":
        echo "It's the start of the week.";
        break;
    case "Friday":
        echo "Weekend is coming!";
        break;
    default:
        echo "It's just another day.";
}
?>

Loops in PHP

Loops can be used in PHP.
Loops mean that if you want to perform any action multiple times, you can use "for" and "while" loops like this.
The "for" loop syntax in PHP is like this:

<?php
for ($i = 1; $i <= 5; $i++) {
    echo "Iteration: $i <br>";
}
?>

The "while" loop syntax in PHP is like this:

<?php
$i = 1;
while ($i <= 5) {
    echo "Iteration: $i <br>";
    $i++;
}
?>

PHP also has a "foreach" loop, which allows you to iterate over arrays like this:

<?php
$fruits = array("Apple", "Banana", "Cherry");
foreach ($fruits as $fruit) {
    echo "$fruit <br>";
}
?>

Additionally, you can also use "do-while" loops in PHP like this:

<?php
$i = 1;
do {
    echo "Iteration: $i <br>";
    $i++;
} while ($i <= 5);
?>

PHP is an object-oriented programming language. Inside PHP, people can create objects through classes. A class is a blueprint because it is used to create objects, and an object is an instance of that class which is created using that template blueprint. If a class is a template, then an object is an instance made with the help of a blueprint.

Objects and Classes syntax can be written something like this:

<?php
// Defining a class
class Car {
    // Properties
    public $brand;
    public $color;

    // Constructor method
    public function __construct($brand, $color) {
        $this->brand = $brand;
        $this->color = $color;
    }
    // Method to display car details (using PHP_EOL for CLI compatibility)
    public function displayInfo() {
        echo "Brand: " . $this->brand . ", Color: " . $this->color . PHP_EOL;
    }
}
// Creating objects (instances) of the class
$car1 = new Car("Toyota", "Red");
$car2 = new Car("Honda", "Blue");
// Calling methods on objects
$car1->displayInfo();
$car2->displayInfo();
?>

Final Note:

PHP is getting quite improved, and definitely evolving as a stable language. This simple to use, beginner-friendly language that people can use for the web. I hope you really liked this history of PHP and understood how to use PHP.

📍 Find me on: LinkedIn | Medium | Bluesky

Comments

[david duymelinck]

The graphic shows the situation until 2022, with PHP 7.4 as the highest used language version. That is just outdated. A more up to date one is this one. Still scary to see people use end of life php versions, lower than 8.2.

In 2020, PHP 8 was released as a stable version. However, PHP's popularity started declining. Developers began criticizing PHP, which led to significant improvements. A JIT compiler was added, and modern programming features were incorporated to keep PHP competitive with modern languages.

That is just rewriting history. The JIT compiler is added to the first PHP 8 version, it is not added as a reaction to critical developers, because then it would be in a PHP 9 version. JIT is one of the main reasons the major version number changed.

There is a better switch in PHP, match.

echo match($day) {
    "Monday" => "It's the start of the week.",
    "Friday" =>"Weekend is coming!",
    default => "It's just another day.",
}

PHP is a multi-paradigm language. It is procedural if you don't use objects. It is object-oriented if you do use objects. And it has some functional capabilities like higher order functions and immutable objects.

The current way of writing a class is

class Car {
   public function __construct(public string $brand, public string $color)
   {}

   pubic function displayInfo() : string
   {
       return "Brand: " . $this->brand . ", Color: " . $this->color
   }
}

Type hinting has become very common in PHP code.

You should never use echo in a class method. That makes the class method only usable as part of the output. Most of the times php applications use a templating engine, and that is in charge of the output.

Jumping from procedural code to object-oriented code is a huge step in terms of computer science knowledge. Just showing the syntax works with procedural code, but for object-oriented code there are a few concepts you have to understand before you should start using it.

[Muhammad Usman]

Thanks for pointing out the version release timeline:
I have updated it using table for better understanding.
And I have provided the reference links where I have fetched that data.