An IT Manager’s Take on PHP Page 5

By Tobias Ratschiller

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Perl is a general scripting language; Java is a full-fledged, complex programming language; Visual Basic Script and JSscript havesbeen post-integrated into ASP. PHP, however, was built with the needs of Web developers in mind. In Web application development, there is no itch PHP cannot scratch. Unlike other cumbersome, overhead-laden approaches, PHP is lightweight and focused on the Web – where it can solve complex problem scenarios quicker and more easily than comparable technologies.

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The syntax and grammatical structure of PHP resembles the C programming language with the complexity (e.g., memory management, pointers, and strong typing) taken out. The developers of PHP aren’t hesitant to integrate the best features of other languages, though, so users will find elements of Perl and Java in PHP. For programmers familiarswith C, Perl, or Java, it should take only a matter of days to get acquainted with PHP. Thanks to the excellent reference manual, any one on a team of developers can probably produce small database enabled applications after just one afternoon.