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If you were to judge from recent headlines, you might think that the only open-source programming languages out there were Ruby and Erlang, with some Python thrown in for good measure. It's true that these three languages have been growing in popularity, and have captured the attention of many writers and programmers. However, the headlines often just reflect the fact that these languages are relatively new and fashionable.

PHP, a programming language for Web applications, has less sex appeal. Many programmers turn their nose up at PHP for a variety of reasons, ranging from its lack of namespaces to the lack of distinction between arrays and hashes, to its encouragement of mixing code and HTML on the same page, to its Perl-like syntax.

But no matter how you view PHP as a language, you can't deny that it has been hugely successful in the marketplace. PHP is installed by default (often along with MySQL) on many Web-hosting systems, and is the language in which a large number of open-source projects (e.g., Moodle and WordPress) are implemented. Plus, PHP has a very shallow learning curve; you can be up and running with a small PHP project in a very short period of time.

PHP continues to benefit from new releases from time to time, although the list of fixes for the latest release included more bug fixes than new features. It would thus seem that PHP has become mature, in a sense that many open-source projects never achieve: It has a large and active community, extensive documentation, many books, at least one commercial software company backing it (Zend), and a large number of projects that depend on it.

And yet, it seems that even a mature project can always find new problems that need fixing. For example, this month, the PHP QA (quality assurance) team has decided to increase the number and scope of automated tests for PHP. I have personally always been impressed, if impatient, with the number of automated tests that are executed when I compile and install PHP. But it would seem that there are many additional tests that need to be written and installed, if PHP is going to be even more stable than before.

In order to get many people to help with the testing, the PHP QA team has invited developers to a virtual "test fest" during the month of May. During May, different local groups from all over the world have indicated that they will help to improve PHP's automated test coverage.

Not only are the QA developers encouraging testers (and test authors) to get together with others in their physical location for mutual support, they're calling for collaboration from people in many different locations. People in remote locations will answer questions via IRC, for the community's benefit.

Automated testing has become a hot topic, and is increasingly seen as a vital way to ensure that software meets a base level of functionality before we go looking for more serious bugs. It's nice to see that while PHP is not the sexiest of languages, the community is still alive and kicking, ensuring that PHP will continue to be useful for at least a few years to come.

• Programming
• php
• testing
• community