ZDNet has a great article on PHP and how it’s succeeding where Java isn’t. I’ve been using PHP for about 2 years now and I’m not intending to stop. Almost all of my freelance projects incorporate PHP scripts one way or another. PHP’s easy development environment and large library of pre-built scripts helps all project maintain low costs and cut down on development time. Another reason PHP has enjoyed this great success is MySQL and vice-versa. PHP incorporates outstanding functionality which enables developers to build database-driven applications and web sites with an ease.

The simplicity of scripting language PHP means it will be more popular than Java for building Web-based applications, Internet browser pioneer Marc Andreessen predicted Wednesday in the US in a speech in California at the Zend/PHP Conference.

The article goes on to examine the future releases of PHP and some reactions from industry professionals such as Rod Smith, vice president of IBM’s Emerging Internet Technologies Group and Mike Milinkovich, executive director of Eclipse. I believe that PHP will become one of the most used scripting languages for application development due to the high increase in support for the open-source community. Especially now since large corporations such as Oracle, IBM and Google are taking a greater interest in open-source development.