How to Evaluate PHP Developer Skills
PHP, a popular scripting language, has been around for over 25 years. PHP, like Snake, is a language of programming that began as a side project in the 1990s by a single developer. Because this script has been around for a while, there has been plenty of time for software engineers to hone their PHP developer skills.
According to W3Techs research, PHP is utilized by 78.3 percent of all webpages with a known server-side computer language, with 40 million live internet sites employing PHP as of this writing. That means that nearly 8 out of every 10 websites you visit on the Internet use PHP in some way.
Despite the fact that it is getting older and that its usage numbers are declining, Stack Overflow has revealed that PHP is still one of the top ten most popular programming, scripting, and markup languages available. Popular websites such as Wikipedia and Facebook, as well as some of the world’s most popular open-source projects such as WordPress and Drupal, use it.
Because Source code is so popular, it’s simple to find designers who assert to be PHP specialists. However, in this article, we will tell you everything you need to know about the language and how to best test for PHP developer skills.
Contents Page
- What precisely is PHP?
What is the purpose of PHP?
What are the benefits of using PHP?
What precisely is PHP?
You may be wondering what a PHP developer is or what a PHP developer does.
A PHP developer, on the other hand, creates, tests, and maintains the source code for PHP-based applications, programs, and websites. A server-side scripting language that is open-source and primarily used for business applications and web development.
PHP is a free javascript library and processor that is extensively used on desktop computers and servers. PHP: Hypertext Pre – processor has replaced PHP: Personal Home Page Tools as an acronym.
A scripting language is a language that runs scripts and interprets them. These scripts are typically embedded in other software packages. Scripts are often used to improve the performance of an application or to conduct mundane activities. Client-side scripts are handled by the client application, and server-side scripts are handled by the server.
1.1 PHP supports both functional and object-oriented programming.
PHP has a comprehensive set of object-oriented programming features, including an object model. Visibility, class abstraction and final keywords, additional magic methods, interfaces, cloning, and type hinting are some of its features. Objects are treated in PHP in the same way that references or handles are, which means that each variable contains an object reference rather than a copy of the entire object.
Although functional programming is available with PHP, it is not a widely utilized paradigm in the language. Other languages, such as Haskell and Swift, were built with functional programming in mind and are hence more suited for this.
1.2 Since when has PHP been in use?
PHP, as previously stated, has been around since the 1990s.
Rasmus Lerdorf began developing it in 1994, when he wrote several Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs in C to maintain his personal homepage.
He extended them to work with web forms and communicate with databases, and dubbed this version “Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter,” or PHP/FI.
1.3 Is PHP similar to any other programming languages?
C has had a significant impact on PHP, as the creator intended PHP to be a templating engine that called C functions. As a result, PHP continues to use the C-style syntax of curly braces and semicolons. PHP looks similar to C, C++, and Java.
PHP and JavaScript are very similar in terms of usage, as they have traditionally shared the web-stack space for decades. Many of the fundamental syntaxes in PHP and JS are nearly identical and have similar interpretations. This is especially true when it comes to loops, conditionals, functions, and array manipulation.
Recently, JS has also adopted class-based syntax, which adds paradigms to how we use PHP. In terms of usage, Python is comparable to PHP if syntax is ignored. In fact, Python can be used in place of PHP in many situations.
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But what’s the goal of PHP?
PHP is primarily used for server-side scripting, so it can do anything a CGI program can do. Collecting form data, generating dynamic page content, and sending and receiving cookies are all examples of this.
The following are the most common applications for PHP developers:
2.1 Websites and web applications (server-side scripting): Server-side scripting is the most common and traditional area of use for PHP developers. Server-side scripting refers to PHP code created on the web server before data is presented in the user’s browser.
2.2 Command line scripting: In addition to building web applications and websites, many other tasks must be performed in the background on the webserver. You don’t need a server or a browser for this; just a PHP parser and a few lines of code.
2.3 Creating desktop applications: There are PHP extensions available to assist with the development of client-side applications. PHP, on the other hand, is not well suited to developing desktop applications with graphical user interfaces.
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What are the advantages of using PHP?
In general, PHP is regarded as a simple programming language for those who are just beginning to learn how to code. PHP, like any other programming language, has coding rules, abbreviations, and logarithms that are fairly simple to learn.
PHP is often used in programming tools, web applications, application servers, application software, and a range of other apps.
It is beneficial to understand why PHP developers and their PHP developer skills exist. Here are a few highlights of its main features:
3.1 Cross-platform compatibility:
PHP can run on a variety of platforms. The majority of operating systems, including Solaris, UNIX, Windows, and Linux, support it. It also works well with MySQL and Apache. It is simple to integrate with Java.
3.2 It is simple to use:
PHP is extensively used due to its simplicity. In contrast to other complex programming languages, PHP is simple, fluent, clean, and organized, making it a boon to new users. PHP has a well-organized syntax that is also logical.
3.3 Simple database connectivity:
A widely used programming language, such as PHP, frequently needs to connect to a database. PHP includes a built-in module that assists it in connecting to databases and, as a result, significantly reduces the time required to manage said databases.
3.4 Source code:
PHP is widely available and free to all users, which is a significant benefit for developers. This is in contrast to other web development scripting languages, which require the user to pay for support files. PHP is available to everyone, at any time and from any location.
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What information should an IT recruiter have about PHP?
We’ve compiled a list of questions that IT recruiters should consider before searching for, screening, and interviewing PHP developers.
4.1 How frequently does its technology stack change?
The PHP Development Team implemented a timeline for the future release of newer versions of PHP on June 28th, 2011. Every month, at least one discharge should be issued under this procedure. A minor release with new features should be made once a year.
Every slight release must be supported for at least two years with security and bug fixes. This is followed by a second a year of only security patches, for a total release cycle of three years for each minimal release.
Even if they are small and self-contained, no new features need to be created into a minor release during in the three-year release cycle. The most recent PHP versions, released on March 19, 2020, seem to be PHP 7.2.29, PHP 7.3.16, and PHP 7.4.4.
4.2 Are there a lot of resources/tools/technologies?
PHP includes a number of free and open-source libraries in its source distribution or incorporates them into PHP binary builds.
PHP is fundamentally an internet-aware system with built-in modules for accessing FTP servers and many database servers, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and SQLite, LDAP servers, and others.
Many C-like functions, such as those in the stdio.h> family, are available in standard PHP builds. The language enables developers to create extensions in C that extend the functionality of the PHP language. PHP extenders can be statically or dynamically compiled into PHP and loaded at runtime.
Among the most popular PHP Frameworks are:
- Zend Framework
- Symfony
- Yii
- Laravel
- CakePHP
The following are some of the most popular PHP Content Management Systems:
- WordPress
- Drupal
- Joomla
- Magento
4.3 What should a PHP developer be aware of?
Employers typically seek a wide range of PHP developer skills. To begin, the PHP developer should be acquainted with object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts, which are widely used in modern programming languages. It will also help them if they are familiar with various PHP frameworks based on MVC.
