First of all I must say im relatively new to the whole PHP scene. Coming
from an OOP background with mostly Java/C++ experience I must say the
transition was not rough as I expected it to be. Unfortunately I have
not been able to code in PHP at an industrial level but use it for many
of my freelance projects which has been very productive up to now. So I
would love to highlight why I love PHP and why I think others who aren't
using it yet, should give it a try.
WAMP is one
of the best bundled package i have seen. Right out of the box you got
yourself an Apache server, mysql database and PHP core. So within a
matter of minutes you are ready to write some productive code without
having to deal with environment setup issues. And you have a wide
variety of bundled
packages to
chose from which fits you needs. Need a mysql client to go through the
database? No need of installing another sql client. Just type
http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ and your ready to create your database
schemas.
All Java folks know how much of a pain it is to compile
your project if you are working on a large scale application. You just
do a small change and stare at your command line as Maven or Ant
destroys 2-5 minutes on average of your precious time. I'm not
emphasizing on build related problems here but the truth of the fact is
there is no matter what, you do waste a portion of your time compiling
code. Whats great about PHP is the fact that it is interpreted. You
just do a change, go to your browser and refresh. That's it. Saved me a
ton of time in many of my freelance projects.
Of course there are PHP
compilers if
anyone ever needs it. Some say it increases the performance but I have
personally not been able to try it. Facebook has written a nice tool
that converts PHP code to C code called
HipHop.
The information presented in this site is just out of this
world. Anything and everything you will ever need when working with PHP
is here so there is no hassle what so ever. When I need a function i
just search it up here and the community has been very active with
various people suggesting better ways of calling various functions which
has been very helpful to me.
Myself and many I know just use
Notepad++
for our coding with PHP. Its just easy to use and switch between
different source files. I don't think anyone ever needs an IDE when
coding in PHP though there are some very useful IDEs out there as listed
here.
From PHP 5 they supported classes, object creation,
constructors and the whole deal. This feature made it very easy for me
in the transition phase from java to php. It was more or less a seamless
transition.
- Plethora of frameworks to choose
You got
Zend,
cake php,
symphony and
so many more frameworks. Its just amazing. If one does not fit your
need you just move to the next one and try it out. The learning curve is
also not that steep as well. The MVC architecture introduced by these
frameworks make you feel at home when coming from a struts background as
myself. And the
DAO layer separation introduced in some frameworks is also a huge plus point for me.
I'm just starting out with PHP and i believe more will be added to this
list as time goes on. If any PHP pros can share their opinion on why you
love the language it is highly appreciated.
From http://dinukaroshan.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-i-love-about-php.html
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