PHP
/pee-aych-pee/ · noun · Development · Origin: 1995
Definitions
A server-side scripting language that powers an estimated 77% of websites with known server-side languages, including WordPress, Facebook (as Hack), and Wikipedia. PHP's low barrier to entry and widespread hosting support made it the backbone of the early web, though it has been the subject of relentless criticism for its inconsistent API design.
In plain English: The most widely used programming language for building websites, powering WordPress and much of the internet despite its critics.
Example: Say what you want about PHP, but WordPress runs 40% of the web and it's all PHP under the hood.
Origin Story
Personal Home Page tools that accidentally became the web's backbone
Rasmus Lerdorf created PHP in 1994 to track visits to his online resume. He called his scripts **Personal Home Page Tools** (PHP Tools). When he released them publicly, other developers started adding features.
PHP was later retronymed to **PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor** -- a recursive acronym in the tradition of GNU (GNU's Not Unix). Lerdorf has said he never intended PHP to become a programming language: "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language."
Despite constant criticism from language purists (inconsistent function naming, weak typing), PHP powers roughly 77% of websites with a known server-side language, including WordPress, Wikipedia, and Facebook's original codebase. Facebook eventually created Hack, a PHP dialect with static typing, rather than abandon the ecosystem.
Coined by: Rasmus Lerdorf
Context: Personal project, 1994 (released 1995)
Fun fact: Lerdorf once said: 'I really don't like programming. I built this tool to program less so that I could just reuse code.' The accidental language he created to avoid programming now runs most of the web.