The document provides a comprehensive overview of PHP, detailing its history from its inception in 1994 to various versions and features. It highlights the language's strengths, such as ease of learning, dynamic typing, and rich web-related capabilities, while also noting weaknesses like inconsistent APIs and scalability issues. Additionally, it lists notable figures in the PHP community and provides resources for further exploration of the language.

1. PHP: The Beginning and the Zend Presentation by Jonathan Hawk. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Non-Commercial license.

2. History 1994 – Started development

3. 1995-06-08 – PHP/FI

4. 1997-11-01 – PHP/FI 2

5. 1998-06-06 – PHP 3

6. 2000-05-22 – PHP 4 (powered by Zend Engine)

7. 2001-12-10 – PHP 4.1 (superglobals)

8. 2002-12-27 – PHP 4.3 (CLI)

9. 2004-07-13 – PHP 5 (powered by Zend Engine II)

10. 2009-06-30 – PHP 5.3 (namespaces, closures) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/RasmuswJGang.jpg (public domain) Rasmus Lerdorf Joomla! Developers

11. Rasmus Lerdorf Twitter: @rasmus https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Rasmus_Lerdorf_cropped.jpg (CC-BY-SA)

12. http://www.flickr.com/photos/isthmene/4370546993 (CC-BY-NC)

13. Andi Gutmans & Zeev Suraski Twitter: @andigutmans/ @zeevs https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Andi_Gutmans_1.jpg (CC-BY) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Zeev_Suraski_2005_cropped.jpg (CC-BY-SA)

14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/heyskinny/549085823 (CC-BY-NC)

15. Use: When? Web sites and Web applications Easy to learn* – finally your web designers can help with the back end!** * = also easy to screw up

16. ** = web designers should not help you with the back end CLI scripts

17. GUI applications (PHP-GTK)

18. Available on Linux, Unix, Windows , Mac OS X, AS/400, Novell NetWare, OS/2, RISC OS, SGI IRIX 6.5.x, Solaris (SPARC, INTEL), Solaris OpenCSW packages

19. http://flickr.com/photos/sister_ray/3461372416 (CC-BY-NC)

20. Use: Good Company

21. Use: Software Most widely-used forums (phpBB, vBulletin)

22. Most widely-used CMSs (Drupal, Joomla!, ezPublish)

23. Most widely-used blogs (WordPress, Typo3, Serendipity)

24. Most widely-used wikis (MediaWiki, DokuWiki)

25. Most web-based e-mail (SquirrelMail, Roundcube, Kerio, Horde IMP)

26. Use: Web Slinger PHP was made for web sites Web server module (ISAPI) Runs in same memory space as web server Fast-CGI

27. CGI Widely adopted – most web hosting includes PHP and MySQL

28. Use: Tag Soup

29. Language: PHP in One Sentence "What if C and Perl had a love child that Java babysat from time to time?"

30. Language: Borrowed From Perl: String usage, type system, variable syntax, operators

31. PHP arrays appear to be a combination of Perl arrays and hashes From C: (PHP is written in C, by the way) Function names

32. Pass-by-reference syntax From Java: Class syntax, interfaces, exceptions

33. Language: Features Dynamically and weakly typed

34. Interpreted Speed through bytecode caches Reflective Types, Names Both procedural and Object-oriented

35. Clone any object, serialize any object

36. Objects passed by reference

37. Arrays and primitives passed by value