
PHP is even considered one of the easier programming languages to learn. PHP is actually an easy language to grasp and is a good place to start before moving into more complex web languages like HTML, CSS, SQL, and JavaScript. That’s why in the book recommendations, we’re going to be focusing on books that teach PHP 7 or later. In 2015, PHP saw a massive update to PHP 7, which introduced the execution engine, Zend Engine 3.0, and therefore a huge performance upgrade.


Now it is a general-purpose scripting language with support for object-oriented programming. It was a few Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs written in C to help create dynamic HTML pages.īut then PHP exploded and became way more than originally intended. Much like JavaScript, the scope of PHP started small. PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf around 1995. PHP is also unique for its surprising origin story.

Perhaps you’ve kicked the language around a little, but you really want to know what’s going on.īooks can provide in-depth knowledge that learning on the job is unlikely to provide. If you are a web developer, you may already encounter your fair share of PHP in templates. WordPress, Drupal, and others communicate with a MySQL database to make managing content easy. You may know PHP as the primary language behind your favorite content management system (CMS).
