In the eyes of most WEB developers, ASP and JSP are considered as leaders, while PHP is considered a weak "struggler", or it is a language that has been derogated into an amateur, and is not worth participating in the competition for corporate web development. In my opinion, the reason why PHP is not considered a competitor is that the commenters lack understanding of it and that they do not understand other operating systems used for web development. Contrary to some opinions, Windows no longer occupies the largest share of the Web virtual hosting service market, and I guess it is also being destroyed in the field of web development.
Why is there no PHP in enterprise development?
Obviously, PHP is considered to be too far behind ASP and JSP that it is useless, but this is exactly inconsistent with the facts. PHP itself is a powerful language. It actually exists on every distribution of Linux and on Mac OS X. Get building-block tools and software for developing and using PHP code are free of charge. Commercial integrated development environments (IDES) for developing PHP applications can also be found—such tools include Komodo (which runs on Linux and Windows) and Zend Studio (which runs on any operating system with a Java running environment). The fact that you can run a website built by PHP on almost every web virtual host without considering what operating system the server is running makes PHP even more attractive.
What can PHP provide?
First forget what is around PHP, and think about what PHP itself can provide. It is a robust server-side language that provides quite a lot of features and can quickly serve the page.
Easy to use
Any user using C or Perl or another language with similar styles and syntax will be able to get started with PHP very quickly. Although it is designed for use on the web, it can also be used as a command line language. Do the web application you are writing require some code to be executed every hour or once a day? Using cron or similar schedule managers, you can plan to execute PHP code when you want it, and use ordinary commands to interpret scripts or batch files to execute such code. You don't need to call the browser automatically to view a special web page to execute your events, and there is no need to rely on the visitor's click to tell your system that specific code needs to be executed at a specific time. The fact that PHP is scalable in this area is absolutely attractive.
Benefits of PHP
I'm not a veteran of JSP or ASP, and I don't want to belittle these languages here. Instead, I will focus on the benefits of PHP.
Localization
PHP allows you to provide localized services to your website visitors. When a user clicks to enter a website, the website will automatically provide the page to them in their native language according to their browser settings. To achieve this, you do not need to use complicated files for language translation, but use the same capabilities as localized C programs, through a system called gettext. If the requested language file exists, the text the user sees is its native language; if the language file does not exist, the text is the default English or any other language you specify. Many localized UNIX applications use gettext as standard, which makes third-party translation a breeze.
Easy to use the command line
PHP supports setting up and executing command-line programs where required. Using the standard UNIX diff tool, it is able to generate errors with the difference between the last modification and the current comment to be sent to the owner of the error using email. The PHP code performs diff on two files written on the system, takes its output as input, and generates an email to be sent. This email is sent by PHP itself.
Other benefits
The above is just two of the powerful functions I used in my program, and there are other functions. For example, you can:
Create simple Flash animations instantly.
Create PDF documents instantly.
Use advanced math features, as well as object-oriented programming techniques.
Read and write to local and IMAP mailboxes.
Any standard Internet protocol can be used in PHP. Want to write a PHP-based FTP, Web or News Client? No problem! Using PHP alone, you will be able to write clients and servers that use standard TCP/IP sockets and create your own protocols.
Implement support for encryption and support for various database servers.
Lack of visionary comments
I think it's extremely short-sighted for those who are looking for top web development languages to exclude PHP. I've been writing code in PHP for many years, and I've written it in PHP whether it's advanced features like error tracking systems or simply reusing normal features like headers and footers. I have written semi-static pages in PHP and also written full-featured multimedia demonstrations. I'm not the only one using PHP. If PHP is not worthy of attention, if it is just a language for pediatrics or enthusiasts, then why is it the fastest growing language in web development? If it is not as powerful as ASP or JSP, why is it used on huge traffic web sites? For example, Yahoo, it is said to be built from PHP.
Developers are used to using familiar products
I'm sure ASP and JSP have their respective strengths, but I believe people use them not because they provide more powerful features than PHP, but because people already know them and want to write code in ways they are used to. Excluding PHP can only indicate ignorance of this language.