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A great way to look into the future of languages is checking how many people is learning it now compared to the last few years, a great tool for that is google

A great way to look into the future of languages is checking how many people is learning it now compared to the last few years, a great tool for that is google trends and things don't look good for PHP: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,python%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p...

ceejayoz 8y ago
I'm not sure that's a great way to evaluate things. Add in "Laravel" and things look pretty different: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,python%20tutorial,laravel https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p... I know I personally steer any newbie away from Googling up "php tutorial" - most of them are horrible, full of bad coding practices and vulnerabilities. I steer them to a good framework and suggest they peruse its docs.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  This is a more fair comparison: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,python%20tutorial,Laravel%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p... You can't just compare searches for tutorials on one platform against an entire other platform itself like that. The vast, vast majority of PHP out there does not use Laravel.
TigerHimself 8y ago
So you are saying that PHP is dying since 2004. That’s ridiculous. There are new languages and more alternatives today that’s it.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  It just takes a long time for certain things to die.
  - quickben 8y ago
    That argument can be made from the other side about golang being artificially kept alive by Google. The comparison isn't on equal footing.
    - crimsonalucard 8y ago
      Is golang dying? Is it losing steam at all?
colecut 8y ago
There is also this to consider https://haydenjames.io/80-percent-web-powered-by-php/ https://haydenjames.io/80-percent-web-powered-by-php/
- The_Amp_Walrus 8y ago
  > Today, PHP is used by more than 80% of all the websites _whose server-side programming language we know_ I find it pretty annoying that they don't post stats on the websites that they couldn't classify. I think it's likely that their survey suffers from some level of survivorship bias: only websites that loudly announce their tech stack get counted. So, how do they know which programming language is being used by a server? From https://w3techs.com/faq https://w3techs.com/faq, they look at: - HTML elements of web pages - Specific HTML tags, for example the generator meta tag - The URL structure of a site - HTTP headers, for example cookies - HTTP responses to specific requests, for example compression I typically run Python / Django sites, and the only way, that you would know I'm running Python is a few Django-specific security/auth cookies. _Maybe_ that stuff gets picked up by their crawler. If I was running another Python web framework, like Flask, then you'd have no idea what kind of app server was sitting behind NGINX.
- chc 8y ago
  I suspect an enormous number of those are WordPress blogs and MediaWiki sites, and I don't feel like that number is very useful without breaking those out. It's a bit like saying Fortran is popular in data science because SciPy is implemented partly in Fortran — not so much an indicator of overall language health as it is an artifact of one product's popularity.
PunchTornado 8y ago
By your tool, then it means that javascript is dying: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=javascript%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=j... Would you say that JS is dying? Not to mention Java, which from Google trends it looks like it's an elephant half-way to the cemetery already https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=java%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=j...
spejic88 8y ago
so are you saying that for javascript the things are not looking good as well ? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,python%20tutorial,javascript%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p...
- mattigames 8y ago
  Not really, its a complex issue, look how five years ago "PHP tutorial" was more searched than JS tutorial but this year "JS tutorial" has almost the double than PHP: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,wordpress%20tutorial,javascript%20tutorial,react%20tutorial,angular%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

ceejayoz 8y ago

I'm not sure that's a great way to evaluate things. Add in "Laravel" and things look pretty different: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,python%20tutorial,laravel https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p... I know I personally steer any newbie away from Googling up "php tutorial" - most of them are horrible, full of bad coding practices and vulnerabilities. I steer them to a good framework and suggest they peruse its docs.

CydeWeys 8y ago
This is a more fair comparison: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,python%20tutorial,Laravel%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p... You can't just compare searches for tutorials on one platform against an entire other platform itself like that. The vast, vast majority of PHP out there does not use Laravel.

TigerHimself 8y ago

So you are saying that PHP is dying since 2004. That’s ridiculous. There are new languages and more alternatives today that’s it.

crimsonalucard 8y ago
It just takes a long time for certain things to die.
- quickben 8y ago
  That argument can be made from the other side about golang being artificially kept alive by Google. The comparison isn't on equal footing.
  - crimsonalucard 8y ago
    Is golang dying? Is it losing steam at all?

colecut 8y ago

There is also this to consider https://haydenjames.io/80-percent-web-powered-by-php/ https://haydenjames.io/80-percent-web-powered-by-php/

The_Amp_Walrus 8y ago
> Today, PHP is used by more than 80% of all the websites _whose server-side programming language we know_ I find it pretty annoying that they don't post stats on the websites that they couldn't classify. I think it's likely that their survey suffers from some level of survivorship bias: only websites that loudly announce their tech stack get counted. So, how do they know which programming language is being used by a server? From https://w3techs.com/faq https://w3techs.com/faq, they look at: - HTML elements of web pages - Specific HTML tags, for example the generator meta tag - The URL structure of a site - HTTP headers, for example cookies - HTTP responses to specific requests, for example compression I typically run Python / Django sites, and the only way, that you would know I'm running Python is a few Django-specific security/auth cookies. _Maybe_ that stuff gets picked up by their crawler. If I was running another Python web framework, like Flask, then you'd have no idea what kind of app server was sitting behind NGINX.
chc 8y ago
I suspect an enormous number of those are WordPress blogs and MediaWiki sites, and I don't feel like that number is very useful without breaking those out. It's a bit like saying Fortran is popular in data science because SciPy is implemented partly in Fortran — not so much an indicator of overall language health as it is an artifact of one product's popularity.

PunchTornado 8y ago

By your tool, then it means that javascript is dying: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=javascript%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=j... Would you say that JS is dying? Not to mention Java, which from Google trends it looks like it's an elephant half-way to the cemetery already https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=java%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=j...

spejic88 8y ago

so are you saying that for javascript the things are not looking good as well ? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,python%20tutorial,javascript%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p...

mattigames 8y ago
Not really, its a complex issue, look how five years ago "PHP tutorial" was more searched than JS tutorial but this year "JS tutorial" has almost the double than PHP: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=php%20tutorial,wordpress%20tutorial,javascript%20tutorial,react%20tutorial,angular%20tutorial https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...