PHP- Its Advantage & Disadvantage And A Brief Intro To PHP 7 with Significant Features

PHP- is Hypertext Preprocessor server-side scripting language used by web developer for the web development with database and it can be used as programming language. PHP is the most selective language among the web developers and most the websites are made in PHP.

PHP can work with the combination of HTML or can be used in combination with various web frameworks, web template system, and web CMS (Content Management System). PHP, originally designed to create dynamic web pages. Meanwhile, PHP now focuses on server-side scripting that provides dynamic content from the web server to client. With PHP many software frameworks are developed to promote RAD (Rapid Application Development) which include CakePHP, Laravel, CodeIgniter, PRADO, Zend Framework, Phalcon, Symfony, and Yil Framework.

According to the sources, PHP was used in more than 240 million websites and was installed on approximately 2 million web servers. We have seen the journey of PHP version from 8th June 1995 1.0 to 7.2 which was released on 30th November 2017. Even if the PHP is most chosen language for creating a website, there are merits and demerits.

First, let's discuss the pros of PHP language-

• Open Source Code & Vast Community: Yes, PHP language is open source, so no need to pay a single penny in the form of license fees. It is developed and maintained by a large community of PHP developers, where you can find blogs, websites, and forums with various solutions to different queries.
• Cross Platform: The websites or apps that built-in PHP can be run on multiple platforms. As the PHP code run properly and smoothly on multiple platforms, so you do not have to worry about client requirement.
• Easily to Use: If you are familiar with C programming language then you can easily learn PHP language within a short span of time. As it uses syntax which is quite similar to the C programming language. Due to this developers finds it easy to learn and manipulate.
• Garbage Collection: Garbage Collector in PHP is used for memory management and it is used by the PHP programmer when they need to free the memory space in case of requirement.

Meanwhile, you can hire PHP developers who can-

• Create dynamic page content
• Create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on server
• Add, delete, and modify data in your database
• Encrypt the data 

Now, let's discuss some cons for PHP language:

• Open source: As PHP comes up with open source code which benefits our pockets but the code can be accessed by another programmer as it says open source. If the programmer is professional, he/she can copy the code of your project and can put it into another project even if you came up with an original idea.
• Change in Version: Due to the large community of PHP developer, new versions appear constantly with the solution and with new features. Simultaneously if the bug appears which do not a have solution until a new version is released which can be irking for any programmer.
• Debugging Tool: To find errors or warning in the code you need the debugging tools which are least available in comparison to other programming languages.
• Not Suitable for large application as it is not highly modular.

You may also like to read: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS TO USE PHP IN WEB DEVELOPMENT SERVICES? AND 3 POINTS TO BE TAKEN CARE WHILE YOU HIRE PHP DEVELOPERS

PHP 7 is the major release of PHP programming language. The main aim was to optimize the PHP performance by refactoring the Zend engine which is successfully done and having PHPNG code merged in PHP 7 it is 2x fast as PHP 5. PHP 7 release is considered to be the most important change for PHP.

The salient features of PHP 7 are mentioned below:-

• Performance Improvement-: According to the Zend team, PHP 7 proves itself more than twice faster, as compared to PHP 5.6 and HHVM 3.7.
• Scalar type declarations:- It has two options i.e. coercive- default set and no need to be specified, and strict- this mode has to be explicitly hinted. Now parameters and return type can be enforced which are int, float, bool, string, interfaces, array, and callable.

EX-
--> <?php
   //coercive example
   function sum(int …$ints)
   {
   return array_sum($ints);
   }
   print(sum(1, ‘2’, 3.5));
   ?>
   Answer-->6
--> <?php
   //strict example
   declare(strict_type=1);
   function sum(int …$ints)
   {
   return array_sum($ints);
   }
   print(sum(1, ‘2’, 3));
   ?>
   Answer--> Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: Argument 2 passed to sum() must be type
   integer……….

• Many fatal errors converted to exceptions
• 64-bit support
• Improved exception hierarchy

There are much more significant features. In comparison with PHP 5.6, PHP 7’s memory consumption is 50 percent better and twice faster. Request a quote to hire dedicated PHP developers for your solutions.