LinuxInsider.com has a new posting today about the success of PHP despite its lack of "official tools" such as .Net, JSP, and ColdFusion. Yet one open source Web scripting language has truly hit the big time: PHP, a fashionably recursive acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor.

Of the roughly 10 million sites running on the Apache Web server, nearly half are running PHP, according to SecuritySpace.com, a consulting group that gathers statistics on Internet online services. More surprising, U.K.-based Internet research and analysis company Netcraft reported last August that the use of PHP on Windows Web servers is skyrocketing and is on course to overtake Macromedia's ColdFusion.

He continues on, giving two PHP editor examples - PHPEd and Zend's Studio. The two are pretty close in functionality, but there are a few differences. PHPEd includes tools such as tons of help manuals, an integrated database client, a forms wizard, and what the reviewer calls it's "most laudable feature", the PHPEd NuSOAP wizard.

On the Zend side of things, he talks about his install issues (Zend Server too difficult to get going?) and quirky behavior with the interface that he found slightly bothersome. The one shining light among these annoyances is the built-in debugger, making finding code errors by searching through endless code a thing of the past.