> That has always been the goal of PHP, to be a web framework in itself
This is untrue. PHP was a templating language and form-handler first and foremost[1]. It took a long time for it to move out of that (I'd argue up to 5.6) and become an actual programming language rather than a template language on steroids. Edit: we still have to move out of template mode in every file by adding a <?php at the top of our files - and don't ever add a whitespace char before that, or else.
So, essentially, we now have web-frameworks built in a templating language. With, ironically, template languages written in that templating language.
Nice, if you like recursion though.
[1] Early PHP was not intended to be a new programming language, and grew organically, with Lerdorf noting in retrospect: "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP#Early_history
We're saying the same thing :) Templating language (for the web) and handle forms (on the web) makes PHP a web-language first and foremost. That's also the impression I get from reading the following section from the Wikipedia page you linked:
> PHP development began in 1994 when Rasmus Lerdorf wrote several Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs in C,[16][17] which he used to maintain his personal homepage. He extended them to work with web forms and to communicate with databases, and called this implementation "Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter" or PHP/FI.
He was working on his homepage (on the web) and wanted to make it easier to handle forms and communication with databases. That's basically everything the early web could do, and PHP aimed to make that easier.
I think I focused too much on the word framework, which is a vague word, and probably means a lot of different things depending on perspective.
My reply was more to explain why I think it is not a framework, but rather a language, to handle web-stuff. But looking at it from other perspectives, that can be "framework" just fine.
Yeah, that's true, my bad for being a bit ambiguous. I always saw PHP as a framework on top of C for writing web applications, which can also be called a language.
But no harm done, thanks for clarifying yourself :)
This is untrue. PHP was a templating language and form-handler first and foremost[1]. It took a long time for it to move out of that (I'd argue up to 5.6) and become an actual programming language rather than a template language on steroids. Edit: we still have to move out of template mode in every file by adding a <?php at the top of our files - and don't ever add a whitespace char before that, or else.
So, essentially, we now have web-frameworks built in a templating language. With, ironically, template languages written in that templating language. Nice, if you like recursion though.
[1] Early PHP was not intended to be a new programming language, and grew organically, with Lerdorf noting in retrospect: "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP#Early_history