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Scope of the Open Source Programming language-PHP

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by mini653

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Hello all

I would like to know what people at cnet think about PHP because I have been hearing about the pros and cons of PHP since lately.

Do all big companies rely more on Dot Net and Java? Is PHP for small companies only? If possible, do mention names of few companies working on PHP projects-either the software companies or their clients.

Does PHP has more functionality than others?

Is PHP less reliable in terms of security than Dot Net or Java?

All readers are welcome to post their opinions.

Thanks

11 replies

by tony hopkinson

You could compare PHP to ASP.NET.
.Net is a framework, not a language. Java has way more about it than PHP.
It's this sort of misapprehension that causes most of the problems.
That'ss why we end up with Javascript enterprise applications with Access backends.

PHP is fairly easy to learn has a great deal of support for Apache, MySQL and others, as a programming language it's crap. There again I'm not sure it was ever meant to be one. Certainly not in the way, that PasCal, C, Perl, Java, Smalltalk etc are.

by techexec2

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Hey Dan... Hope all is going well for you.

To be sure, over time there have been some vulnerabilities found and fixed in PHP itself, much like other Internet-facing code. However, the vast majority of security vulnerabilities and exploits incorrectly attributed to PHP are actually in the applications written in PHP. Weak application programmers writing weak code. They would fail similarly no matter what language they used.

by danlm

One of the reasons I have always stayed away from PHP is what I posted the link for. I consider it very insecure. It's insecurity scares me. Even when I look for open source solutions(pre coded), I always reject anything that was developed in php.

I apologize for not following your train of thought when I responded under you. I should have responded separately.

Dan

by danlm

How many other application languages need to have patch's applied against them? The language itself, and not an application written in it.

Serious question.

Vb?

.net?

c?

perl?

c++?

tcl?

Ok, if I had to guess. Maybe vb or .net. But I still don't see the number of exploits reported that you see with PHP. Bad coding is not an exploit unless it is specific to the application that was developed. But it still shouldn't require that patch's be applied to the full coding language.

Still don't trust PHP. And I apologize, but I would be hard pressed to change my mind on this one.

Dan

by techexec2

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I'm not trying to convince you to like PHP. I'm just passing along some information. The bad security rap about PHP is due to bad application programmers, not big problems in PHP, per se.

Unlike C or C++, PHP is more than just a programming language. It's also an execution environment and it has a large set of built-in functions to make building dynamic web sites easier. It's the execution environment/functions side that has required some security fixes, much like in other execution environments such as Perl or Java. A C++ framework or class set can have similar security issues.

Why so many exploits with applications developed in PHP? PHP is very easy to approach for complete novice website "developers" that don't know what they're doing. Right or wrong, a few years ago PHP became a very widely offered "platform" by the web hosts. This combination produces a large number of exploits. It's an application "programmer" problem.

A competent programmer can write secure PHP applications. No cross-site scripting. No SQL injection. Etc.

BTW: I think you're right to stay away from off-the-shelf applications written in PHP without very careful vetting.

edit: clarifications

by jaqui

originally.
It has a bad reputation for security, which is based on bad scripting rather than issues with the language itself.

With the C / C++ syntax and object oriented design, php can be a very effective language to use in website development. I would not recommend using it for application development as Java is. PHP is not meant for that type of use.
Under any *x os, php can be used for shell scripting [ as with perl, python, ruby, ... ] with apache it can even be used instead of perl for cgi.

As with any language, it's usefullness and security rely on the skills of the person(s) doing the coding.

by holod

It was designed for producing dynamic web pages. Now it can include a command line interface capability and can be used in standalone graphical applications. It is similar to other server-side scripts that provide dynamic content from a web server to a client, such as Microsoft's Active Server Pages, Sun Microsystems' JavaServer Pages, and mod_perl. PHP executes hundreds of base functions and thousands more via extensions.
The PHP Group produces the main implementation of PHP which serves as the de facto standard for PHP, because there is no formal specification now. PHP Group provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use. It is considered a free software released under the PHP License. But it is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) as there are restrictions on the usage of the term PHP.
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that can be embedded into HTML. It generally runs on a web server and creates web pages taking PHP code. It is also used for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications. It works on most web servers, operating systems and platforms free of charge. PHP can be used with many relational database management systems. Now, according to php tutorials, it functions on more than 20 million websites and 1 million web servers.
PHP can be compared to a filter as it takes input from a file or stream containing text and/or PHP instructions and outputs another data; HTML is the most common output. It can automatically identify the language of the user.

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