TalkBack Central: PHP was meant for the Web

In the Web community of developers, I have recently seen a very quick switch from Perl 5 to a new language--PHP 4.0. When I first delved into this language I initially thought it was nothing more than a rip-off from Perl. However, I then noticed something in particular about PHP 4; it went directly into the HTML code. I think PHP was meant for the Web--and Perl was not.

PHP will phase out Perl as the Web Scripting language of choice within two years. It will do this by its inclusion of itself in the HTML, plus its out-of-the-box ability to handle connecting to a MySQL server. This kind of power is greatly appreciated by people like myself, people who are tired of an archaic way of connecting to such a database in Perl. This, coupled with the fact that PHP's interpreter is nearly 10 times as fast as the Perl interpreter, makes this an obvious choice.

PHP is a strong and popular HTML-embedded scripting language that is developed for the Web. It is also very similar to Perl, making the transition from Perl to PHP to a few mere hours of tinkering. This kind of switch is hard to find, however worthwhile in striving to make the Web faster and better.

Mike Eggleston is a Web Developer.

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