4 ms·

Quite possibly never, but it was arguably the best web language in the early 2000s.

• plorkyeran 14y ago
  Perl fans would probably object strongly to that, but it is true that when PHP first caught on there really weren't any great choices.
  • prunebeads 14y ago
    The strong selling point of PHP for a long time was cheap hosting. Combine that with a fast learning curve and you're set. Nowadays, it's not so clear cut price wise, but PHP took a strong advance in term of user base - look at the number of libraries, projects, and jobs (!) available in PHP, vs python or ruby.
    • gubatron 14y ago
      good selling points, but those things never made it a good language, it was just convenient.
      • prunebeads 14y ago
        PHP followed a very uncommon path. Features were added as needed, in an incremental fashion. Nice syntax is never a huge problem, though that's probably most people complaint. That said, it isn't worse than its "contenders" in terms of feature set. You get a decent object system, lambdas (note that they'd been there for a long time, but it's more convenient now), a wide range of bindings. It's not pretty, but it does the job in many cases. But, anyway, if you're really looking for a good language (something efficient, where you don't have to spend hours to spot a stupid bug), skip the dynamic ones altogether, and go for as much static analysis you can get.