BETA is a pure object oriented programming language developed by Scandinavian School in System Development, Nordic Universities.

This was released after a series of enhancements of their first object oriented language SimulaI which was a simulation language. Soon it was generalized into Simula67 which had the object oriented framework, and worked on the concepts of class, sub-class, virtual functions etc. This was enhanced by another object oriented language Delta that worked for system description; this meant it could express predicate logic and state changes. This was a non-executable effort and thus did not qualify as a language. So it was decided to design a programming language Gamma that works as Delta but is executable.

Eventually, Gamma was never made, rather Beta was made. While Beta was being made, it was realized that Beta was much more powerful than what Gamma would be or ever could be. Beta is a programming language like C++.

Currently, BETA is available on UNIX workstations, on PowerPC Macintosh and on Intel-based PCs. BETA has an optimum balance between compile time checking and run time checking. The type cast checking is done at compile time, however, for the entire set of type check and type conversion to be done at compile time requires a lot of time and thus increases the complexity of a program. Thus, an optimum balance has been made.

BETA is a logical description of the language. It works on the concepts of class, sub-class, virtual functions etc. It also contains transient variables, ones whose scope is program execution, and persistent variables, those whose values are retained in the disk space and are available at the time of next execution.

What is PHP?

PHP stands for PHP: HyperText Preprocessor, it is a server-side scripting language, and as the name goes, it is to create dynamic and interactive Websites for your visitors. Maybe you currently make your Websites in HTML? HTML alone cannot create dynamic Web pages, HTML is clearly defined as a static language, as it is always static and mainly is used for structuring (or styling, in some cases) a document (or a Web page, if you like).

What do we mean by server-side scripting?

You may already know, but HTML is a client-side language, so the browser translates the HTML code into "bytecode" that the computer can understand, and so the computer translates bytecode into what we can clearly understand, text, for example. Server-side scripting is a little different, a little bit more added to the story. As with PHP, server-side scripting languages have an interpreter inside a machine, that translates the code (in our case, PHP code) to HTML code (that the browser can understand), and then the same process will take place with the browser translating the HTML code to bytecode, and so forth. With server-side scripting languages, you don't need anything adding to your browser or computer, as the interpreter inside the machine that hosts the particular Website does most of the work.

What's the fuss with server-side scripting languages, then?

The thing that makes server-side scripting a must nowadays is because it can generate dynamic Web pages, but what do we mean by dynamic Web pages? Well, imagine you wanted to start a forum, and you used HTML. Okay, you used a form to submit the data and it is sent to your e-mail address, and you have to edit the static Web page every time you want a new post added. That, to me, would be the most annoying job of creating a Website. However, with PHP (or any other server-side scripting language, for that matter), can be completely automated, and you'd not have to edit your file even once! The thing that PHP does, is sends the form data to a different page, saves it in "pre-defined" variables (things that store a value), and using something called a "while loop" that continually loops all the posts saved in the Web page - and that's it! PHP stores the posts in a MySQL database (something that holds data, if you like, like member accounts, etc) and uses that as long-term memory.

But if we're talking about server-side scripting languages, what makes PHP different from the rest? Well, simply put, PHP is probably the best thing that has come into the server-side scripting genre. If you have heard about other scripting languages like Perl or ASP/ASP.NET, you'll come to find that they are extremely hard to learn from. Put it this way, the majority of Web developers that use ASP.NET, for example, are those who have come from a different programming background, like have known VBScript, or other languages that's in relation to ASP.NET, the same with Perl. The difference between PHP and the rest, is PHP is incredibly easy to learn, especially for the newbies towards this industry, and PHP has took several steps to ensure an easy introduction to those newbies to the world of programming. Let's do an example, lets see which is the easiest to understand, out of PHP, VBScript and Perl, by doing a simple "Hello World" program, that outputs text to a Web page:

PHP:

echo "This is some text that'll be shown in a Web page...";

VBScript/ASP.NET:

Response.Write("This is some text that'll be shown in a Web page...");

Perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "content-type: text/html nn";

print "This is some text that'll be shown in a Web page...";

Okay, now I am not going to say things like "well, obviously PHP is the easiest to understand" - as obviously, we all have different preferences, but what I can say is, that they all do the same thing. Which seems the most logical to you? In my opinion, the two most logical ones for me is PHP and VBScript/(ASP.NET).

Now it's up to you which one you want to go ahead with, experiment which one is best for you, after all, we all have dfferent tastes.

Good luck!

Below are a few resources to get started with PHP:

# - w3schools.com

# - php.net

# - mysql.com

With the Web becoming the most popular and powerful source of information and a hype in the content management software market today, more and more people are realizing the importance of Web based Content Management Softwares. These softwares have proven themselves to be a great way to maintain the integrity of a web portal thereby allowing even the non-technical people of the organization to have control over the content.

In fact, with an advancement of the technology and the introduction of CMS's people no longer require professional webmasters to maintain their website for them. The requirement of professionals for managing web files and content is no longer needed. Professional web masters are also much more costly as compared to a Web based CMS. Hiring a web professional becomes an even major waste of resources when there is not too much content to be published on the Web. This, however, can be avoided by getting the assistance of a Web Content Management Software.

Not only does a content management software solution allow you to create manage and publish your web files and web content without having to learn HTML but also reduces time required to perform these tasks manually. With a net content management system you can be sure that you would be free of all hassle of managing your content and thus create better files and improve the quality and quantity of your web portal as well.

This way, you would be able to increase your business and achieve extreme efficiency in your work. These content management systems would also cut your expenses on hiring a professional web master or programmer and thereby increase your profits immensely. With some of the most wonderful and easily accessible features these content management system software are becoming popular day by day.

However, before opting for any one of the website content management system one must make sure to check for certain features. For starters, the CMS must have interactive set-ups and good configuration tools. The basic editors of code in the content management software must also be What You See Is What You Get Format (WYSIWYG). The web portal owner must also ensure that the CMS offers a wide array of font types and layouts for templates so that they are able to create more innovative and improved web sites and web pages.

The best content management system would be the one that provides the user with an ability to make several changes on-site in various versions of their content and images. The CMS must also help the user to create templates for their website and thereby assist them in maintaining and editing the page links better.

An automated Web Content Management System must also be based on authentication levels. This way, content developers would be granted permission to access even the authorized areas within the Web Site. This permission based accession for content management would also allow content designers to create, access and manage menus, hyperlinks, submenus as well as create new pages simultaneously.