PHP

General-purpose scripting language designed for web development. Executes on the server to produce dynamic HTML, handles form data, integrates with databases, and serves APIs. Fast, flexible, and pragmatic: the runtime is widely available on shared hosting, VPS, and containers.

Runs WordPress, Wikipedia, Slack backend, and many large-scale sites. The PHP Foundation and contributors maintain an active release cycle with modern language features such as JIT compilation, named arguments, enums, and fibers. Compared to Node.js or Python for web backends, it ships with built-in HTTP handling, a rich standard library, and broad hosting support without extra configuration.

Notable capabilities:

• Server-side execution with native HTTP request and response handling
• Built-in support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and many databases
• Extensible via PECL extensions for imaging, XML, encryption, and more
• CLI mode for scripts, cron jobs, and build automation
• Runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS with wide hosting availability

Backs dynamic websites and content management systems, REST and GraphQL APIs, e-commerce platforms, and automation or deployment scripts. Developers pair it with frameworks like Laravel or Symfony, Composer for dependency management, and tools like PHPUnit for testing.