PHP has gained enormous popularity in the form of a powerful server-side scripting language. Developers use PHP to develop most of the dynamic websites. The efficiency of the language has inspired many big IT companies to use PHP for creating web applications. The IT industry is constantly looking for skilled PHP developers who can build robust applications using the language. The high demand for PHP professionals has inspired many students, fresh graduates and software professionals to pursue a career in PHP development.
Despite the popularity and proven performance of the language, many people have certain misconceptions about the language. Such people question the efficiency of PHP on the basis of these myths.
The common myths about PHP and the reality behind them are as follows:
PHP is not based on Object Oriented Programming
Many programmers think that PHP is not OOPs based. But in reality, the language has a large number of object-oriented features like abstract objects, methods and interfaces. The earlier versions of the language lacked OOPs features, but the PHP 5 has plenty of such features.
The language does not allow te usage of certain functionalities
Many developers feel that the language does not allow them to use certain features such as memory access. But, the reality is that the language is extensible. One simply needs to create a code in C++ or C, create an extension and then integrate it.
PHP has many extensions of its own, and it is likely for you to find the one you need among them. In such a case, you do not even need to create an extension.
The language is not secure enough
Another common misconception about the language is that the websites and applications built using it are not secure. It is true that unlike.NET that is a secure by default, in case of PHP, you need to write a separate code. So, security of PHP applications is not a problem, provided you write proper codes for it.
The language cannot be used to develop large applications
Complex and large applications call for a language that is highly reliable and has high performance. If you have the skill to design and develop a stable architecture for your application, you would not face any problems with the scalability and performance of the application. So, whether you are using PHP or any other programming language, you need to develop a stable application architecture.
The developers have used PHP to build some of the largest web applications and websites such as Yahoo, Wikipedia and Facebook. This fact proves that PHP is efficient enough to build large applications.
You can use the language only to develop websites
This misconception has arisen from the fact that PHP is the most commonly used language to build websites in the present era. However, you can also develop applications using PHP, which should run outside the server. By using Command Line Interface (CLI), you can develop applications running outside web server.
The language can also build applications which depend on the CPU’s functionalities. You can execute such applications with the help of the “PHP CLI” executable. You can develop desktop applications using PHP with the help of windows specific extensions.
PHP has all the features that are needed to develop a robust application. It is easy to learn and can offer a great career to professionals looking for a career in web development.
