I’ve encountered a lot of challenging situations as a PHP programmer, from the big things (creating and optimizing complex applications that access millions of rows of data) to the smaller things (figuring out where to put more reminders after I’ve run out of room for post-its on my monitors). One of the problems I face most often is trying to explain to people what I do for a living. Generally, I just answer with “I’m a programmer” and people drop the subject. Who really wants to hear about code in a social situation? A small percentage of people are not deterred by this, however, and will ask for more details. This is where it gets tricky. Saying that I’m a web programmer is true, but makes most people think I write HTML. The truth is that even though much of our world runs on PHP, most people have absolutely no idea what it is. So here’s a crash course:
HTML by itself is what we call static. That means that it will look the same each time you see it. The only way to change the information on the page is to go in and change the actual file. This is great for simpler websites or websites that don’t need to change their information very often. Some websites require more functionality, however. That’s where PHP comes in. READ MORE
