PHP has had a tumultuous past. Since it first appeared it has only grown in popularity and with that popularity came the criticism.

PHP’s growth in popularity can be attributed to several “features” it contains. A lack of important features like namespaces and its apparent disorganized state are some of them. But the ease with which a programmer can learn the language has been it most winning feature. Couple that with the previous two “features” and you can see why PHP developers are often looked down upon. PHP code up until recently was regarded as having multiple vulnerabilities due to being developed by inexperienced programmers. The lack of a structure meant that code could be inefficient, filled with inconsistencies and generally behave in unpredictable ways.

While all this cannot be disputed, in recent times things have changed for PHP and it has changed for the better. Object Oriented Programming has literally been the savior for the programming language. By bringing in concepts that are used in more structured languages like Java and C++, PHP has grown in stature. “Proper” PHP programmers, those who adhere to the OOP structure have been growing in numbers over the years and PHP finally seems to have taken its rightful place in the programming world.

Organized PHP mediums like CakePHP are now the most popular sources for producing PHP code. Frameworks such as CakePHP draw inspiration from other structured mediums like Ruby on Rails. RoR was the single most influential framework that helped the Ruby programming language achieve structure.