What is PHP?

I was asked this question recently and thought I would post my answer. After all, if you are a geek that isn't into the web side of things you might have no idea, but would appreciate a brief description.

PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Processor and it is primarily used as a server side scripting language akin to ASP (Active Server Pages) or JSP (Java Server Pages). A server side scripting language allows someone to create a dynamic web page. Traditionally, web pages were/are created using static HTML. Server side scripting languages allow you to create a program that creates HTML on the fly, normally based on user input or back-end database queries.

PHP also allows you create stand-alone applications via a command line interface. PHP can be used through either IIS or Apache web servers and can be installed on a multitude of operating systems.

PHP is a pivotal part of the LAMP architecture as well. LAMP stands for (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) and refers to a set of free software that, when combined, gives a complete, enterprise worthy web server.

Being fortunate enough to know how to program in all three of the languages mentioned (ASP, JSP and PHP) I can say that PHP is my language of choice, both for it's ease of use and good learning curve. That being said, I have also found PHP to be the hardest of the three to install and properly configure.