20. Limitations of PHP

Everything has limitations or disadvantages and PHP is no exception. The following are the limitations of PHP (so be WARNED !!)

1. PHP is NOT 100 % pure Object Oriented scripting language. But in near future PHP may support 100% object oriented scripting (PHP may imitate most of the syntax of Java language). PHP already imitates some features of Java language. (In future PHP language will imitate most features of Java language and Java programmers will love PHP. And PHP will have java keywords like class, extends, interface, implements, public, protected, private etc..).
2. PHP will NOT give the performance of "C" or "C++" language. Because it is scripting language and is interpreted it will be a bit slower than the optimized "C++" programs. For top performance, you should use "C++" and fast-CGI with database/webserver connection pooling and use C++ compiler optimizer "-O3" options. Zend optimizer in PHP 4 will speed up the performance of PHP and bring it very close to optimized "C" code .
3. But note a point that PHP was designed for very Rapid Web-Application Development tool. If it takes about 3 months to code a web application in C++, then using PHP you can develop the same web application in just 4 days!! And with zend optimizer, the speed of execution of PHP will be very close to that of equivalent C++ program!! Hence, there is really no advantage in using C/C++ for web development. PHP itself is written in 100% "C" language.

On the other hand, PHP has lot of advantages and it's advantages outweigh it's limitations -

1. You can very rapidly develop web applications in PHP as compile and link is eliminated in PHP scripting language.
2. PHP applications are very stable and do not depend on the browser technologies unlike Javascript applications which depend on browsers. PHP will give you the freedom to select any server platform. The browser does not know that the HTML page is generated by PHP !!
3. PHP has excellent database conectivity to all SQL database servers.
4. PHP has partial support for Object oriented features
5. PHP has C++, Perl, Javascript like syntax features and has programs like 'ptags/ctags' to navigate the source code
6. PHP has Zend optimizer which speeds up the performance
7. PHP runs on all UNIX'es, linux, Windows 95/NT/2000 and is more powerful than ASP, JSP and others.
8. PHP has a very large user base and developer base.

See also Python: If you want 100% pure Object Oriented scripting language than you MUST consider Python. The 'Python' is a object oriented scripting language from ground up. You would be using the Python Web Application server called 'Zope' which is available at - http://www.zope.org and python is at http://www.python.org