PHP vs ColdFusion/Hello World

Hello World was seen as early as 1974 in Bell Laboratorie's internal memorandum by Kernighan —Programming in C: A Tutorial— which shows the first known version of the program: main( ) { printf("Hello, world!"); } In this tutorial we will use one variable named message to display a string of text. Putting it Together These files should always be created using a program that doesn't include formating, and saves to a non-rich text format such as notepad.exe (Win32), Pico (Command line), Kedit (KDE), or Gedit (GNOME). PHP: <html> <head> <title>Test</title> </head> <body> <?php $message = "Hello World!"; echo $message; ?> </body> </html> ColdFusion: <html> <head> <title>Test</title> </head> <body> <cfset message = "Hello World!"> <cfoutput>#message#</cfoutput> </body> </html> Line Breakdown This is a very simple example because they both do the same thing, in the same amount of code. Not too hard so far eh? Lets see what actually makes them tick... PHP: 07 <?php 08 $message = "Hello World!"; 09 echo $message; 10 ?> Line#07 <?php Starts allowing php code to be parsed Line#08 Stores $message with the value Hello World! Line#09 echo Dumps the value Hello World! Line#10 ?> Ends php ColdFusion: 07 08 <cfset message = "Hello World!"> 09 #message# 10 Line#07 Starts the ability to output to the browser Line#08 <cfset Stores #message# with the value Hello World! Line#09 #message# Dumps the value Hello World! Line#10 End the ability to output to the browser What the Browser Sees Either way, these two scripts produce the same exact page, the only thing different are the server headers. <html> <head> <title>Test</title> </head> <body> Hello World! </body> </html> Displayed in Browser Hello World!