It is about More Than Just Code

Wouldn’t describing PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) as a programming language be a bit reductive when you think about it? We must face the facts: PHP is not a simple programming language. It’s a complete ecosystem, with a gigantic community, thousands of contributors, and new features being proposed and released regularly. But not only that: millions of libraries and application programming interfaces (API) are written and launched thanks to PHP. Even many command-line tools are entirely developed thanks to the PHP language. PHP is a whole world on its own. Let’s start by looking at the reasons why PHP is not just a language for writing a website.

These are the topics we will cover in this chapter:

• PHP as an ecosystem
• Choosing the right libraries
• A word about semantic versioning
• Stability versus trends