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You're looking at a .php file — a server-side script that generates HTML. PHP powers WordPress (43% of all websites), Laravel, Drupal, MediaWiki, and a massive portion of the web that people don't realise is PHP. If you've ever interacted with a web form, bought something online, or read a blog, PHP probably processed the request.
Rasmus Lerdorf created PHP in 1994 as a set of C scripts for his personal home page (hence "Personal Home Page," later renamed "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" — a recursive acronym). The language grew chaotically, accruing inconsistent function names, weak typing surprises, and security patterns that made developers wince. Modern PHP (8.0+) is genuinely good — typed properties, match expressions, named arguments, fibers — but the reputation from the messy years lingers.
VS Code with PHP extensions handles syntax highlighting and IntelliSense. PhpStorm (JetBrains, paid) is the premium IDE. To run PHP, you need a web server with PHP installed — XAMPP and Laravel Valet are the quickest local setups. PHP files execute on the server and return HTML to the browser — you can't run them by double-clicking.