PHP vs. Python: Difference Between Programming Languages

Difference between PHP and Python

PHP (Hypertext Pre-Processor) is a server side scripting languages mainly used in developing dynamic and interactive web pages. PHP was released in 1995 and is now maintained by the PHP Group. Python is aninterpreted high level programming language. It is used both as a scripting as well as a non scripting language.

Photo by Sara Golemon	Photo by quinn.anya

History

PHP was developed in 1995 by a programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf. Its original full form was as personal homepage tools. Rasmus wrote some Perl scripts to maintain his personal homepage. The first version of PHP was written in the C programming language with CGI binaries and was able to work with web forms and to link to databases. Two Israeli programmers Zeev and Andi rewrote the parser for PHP to launch PHP3 with a full form “Hypertext Pre-processor”. A number of versions have been released since then with 5.3.x and 6.0 currently under development.

The first version of Python was developed in the 1980’s with Van Rossum as the principle author of Python. Its implementation began in 1989 as a successor to the ABC language that was capable of interfacing with the Amoeba operating system. Python 2.0 was released in 2000 and this newer version had full garbage collector capabilities and supported Unicode. Python 3.0 was released in 2008 and was notably backward compatible.

Features

PHP is flexible enough to be used with different operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX and Solaris. One can use different compilers available for PHP to increase the speed of execution or to perform static analysis. PHP is open source and hence anyone can download it for free. Python is a multi-paradigm programming language. It supports imperative, object oriented, functional, structured, and aspect oriented programming. It makes use of late binding, dynamic typing and reference counting for memory management.

Usage

Both PHP and Python are generally used as scripting languages for server side web development. It is interesting to note that some architectures are used for the purpose of web development such as WAMP or LAMP. Here W stands for Windows whereas L is for LINUX OS. A and M are Apache Server and MySql respectively. P may either refer to PHP or Python or even Perl. This gives us an idea of how much the two languages are similar when we talk about their usage.

Similarities and Differences

PHP

• It was released in 1995 by a programmer – Rasmus Lerdorf and is now maintained by the PHP Group.
• Its original full form was the personal homepage tools.
• Zeev and Andi rewrote the parser for PHP to launch PHP3 with a full form “Hypertext Pre-processor”.
• It can be used with different operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX and Solaris.
• It can be linked to different database systems easily.

Python

• Python is aninterpreted high level programming language.
• First version of Python was developed in 1980’s.
• Python is a multi-paradigm programming language and supports imperative, object oriented, functional, structured, and aspect oriented programming.
• It makes use of late binding, dynamic typing and reference counting for memory management.
• P in WAMP or LAMP architectures may either refer to PHP or Python or even Perl.