A good place to start is the Stackoverflow Developer Survey (http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016 http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer

A good place to start is the Stackoverflow Developer Survey (http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016 http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016). The 2016 results show PHP as the 5th most popular technology (25.9%) compared to Node.js (17.2%). PHP has dropped and Node.js risen by 5%~ since the 2015 results. However, their "most dreaded" list has LAMP at 68.7%. Being that nearly three quarters of all people using a LAMP stack do not want to be doing so. Conversely, Node.js is loved, with 59.6% of respondents who develop with it wanting to continue to develop with it. Whilst PHP represents 3x the volume of Node.js topics, Node.js topics has risen 26.8% since last year, and PHP dropping 3.8%. Import to note though is that whilst PHP declined, WordPress also increased 18.5%. MySQL's results still fairs better than SQL Server. The survey results note: > The average developer regularly uses between 4 and 5 major programming languages, frameworks and technologies. The most common 2-technology combination is JavaScript & SQL. The most common 3-tech combination is JavaScript, PHP, and SQL. I would argue that PHP is completely alive and kicking but people aren't interested in it as much. Given the age of PHP compared to Node.js, and the way trends work, I think it is far early to crown a new LAMP king.