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Often when there is a post about PHP I read over these treads sort of subtly trying to figure out how a language with such a large user base has remained basica

Often when there is a post about PHP I read over these treads sort of subtly trying to figure out how a language with such a large user base has remained basically invisible to me. And I don't think I live in the HN bubble, though I do use a lot of Python, in my consulting work I've also done plenty of work with .NET, JVM to a lesser extent and other "boring" tech. But PHP has literally never come up, even as a suggestion or as a tool that is a small part of the company stack or whatever. It feels like I'm looking into a strange parallel universe of software development reading through these threads. PHP devs, where are you?

oo0shiny 7y ago
Right here! Drupal has been moving into the enterprise sector with their latest release (v8, built on Symfony). I get a lot of interest from recruiters based on my Drupal background, especially lately.
Kluny 7y ago
Right here! Started working for a PHP shop straight out of college, and have never been able to get hired for anything else since then.
DCoder 7y ago
Right here! PHP and JS/TS is what I do every day. PHP has its tentacles all over the web: WordPress and Drupal are immensely popular for simplistic sites and short-lived promotionals, Magento and WooCommerce attract many e-commerce users, and Symfony/Laravel handle the custom stuff. I've worked with all of these and have the scars to show for it. All popular projects have swarms of consultants offering advice, prebuilt additions, and custom development. (E.g. WordPress plugins and themes are everywhere.) This is also a significant factor for the penny-pinching customer — from their point of view, they avoid vendor lock-in and expensive development this way. (Spoiler: it rarely works out, in the end. "Tower of Babylon" and "shallow learning curve" mix in very exciting ways.) So there are masses of people who know the basics of PHP and call themselves "PHP developers". In my opinion, just a fraction of them actually deserves that title.
- cbdumas 7y ago
  So I get the sense that PHP is sort of the tool of choice for web development at small or medium businesses which are not primarily software businesses, but are looking to create a website and maybe do some ecommerce? Is that right? If so I guess it makes sense that I wouldn't have seen it, most of my consulting work has been at relatively large enterprises.
  - DCoder 7y ago
    It definitely feels that way, yes. I've mostly dealt with small businesses looking for the lowest bidder and medium businesses unable to spend a fortune on software licenses and highly-experienced devs, and PHP fits that segment well.
  - hnick 7y ago
    Pretty much any shared hosting service (which is the default for a small business not going for a more handheld hosted solution like Squarespace or Shopify) is cPanel enabled with PHP, MySQL (via phpMyAdmin), one-click Wordpress installation, and other similar features.
- chx 7y ago
  > [WordPress and] Drupal are immensely popular for simplistic sites That's not a sentence I expected to see. Ever. Drupal is popular for many things but for simplistic sites?
  - DCoder 7y ago
    This may be a regional thing. I've seen Drupal 6/7 on a lot of sites where the original dev threw together five content types in the admin GUI and told the admin how to post new content. It worked well and was certainly less worrisome than seeing (outdated) WordPress.
  - blowski 7y ago
    We run about 1,000 simple websites off the same Drupal codebase. Custom forms, page layouts, etc.
n42 7y ago
ever heard of Facebook? Slack? Etsy? WeWork? Box? Yelp? just to name a few.
- verbify 7y ago
  Or mediawiki
dennispeach 7y ago
Here’s one right here! In the world I’m in and the journey I’ve taken in my career of being in digital/dev for 10+ years, PHP is what I have based my dev foundations on. (albeit web rather than software) I am recruiting PHP developers for my team now, and they are out there, but maybe not here?! We make websites, and not a tremendous amount beyond that bar a few Laravel apps. I suspect we travel in totally different worlds?!

oo0shiny 7y ago

Right here! Drupal has been moving into the enterprise sector with their latest release (v8, built on Symfony). I get a lot of interest from recruiters based on my Drupal background, especially lately.

Kluny 7y ago

Right here! Started working for a PHP shop straight out of college, and have never been able to get hired for anything else since then.

DCoder 7y ago

Right here! PHP and JS/TS is what I do every day. PHP has its tentacles all over the web: WordPress and Drupal are immensely popular for simplistic sites and short-lived promotionals, Magento and WooCommerce attract many e-commerce users, and Symfony/Laravel handle the custom stuff. I've worked with all of these and have the scars to show for it. All popular projects have swarms of consultants offering advice, prebuilt additions, and custom development. (E.g. WordPress plugins and themes are everywhere.) This is also a significant factor for the penny-pinching customer — from their point of view, they avoid vendor lock-in and expensive development this way. (Spoiler: it rarely works out, in the end. "Tower of Babylon" and "shallow learning curve" mix in very exciting ways.) So there are masses of people who know the basics of PHP and call themselves "PHP developers". In my opinion, just a fraction of them actually deserves that title.

cbdumas 7y ago
So I get the sense that PHP is sort of the tool of choice for web development at small or medium businesses which are not primarily software businesses, but are looking to create a website and maybe do some ecommerce? Is that right? If so I guess it makes sense that I wouldn't have seen it, most of my consulting work has been at relatively large enterprises.
- DCoder 7y ago
  It definitely feels that way, yes. I've mostly dealt with small businesses looking for the lowest bidder and medium businesses unable to spend a fortune on software licenses and highly-experienced devs, and PHP fits that segment well.
- hnick 7y ago
  Pretty much any shared hosting service (which is the default for a small business not going for a more handheld hosted solution like Squarespace or Shopify) is cPanel enabled with PHP, MySQL (via phpMyAdmin), one-click Wordpress installation, and other similar features.
chx 7y ago
> [WordPress and] Drupal are immensely popular for simplistic sites That's not a sentence I expected to see. Ever. Drupal is popular for many things but for simplistic sites?
- DCoder 7y ago
  This may be a regional thing. I've seen Drupal 6/7 on a lot of sites where the original dev threw together five content types in the admin GUI and told the admin how to post new content. It worked well and was certainly less worrisome than seeing (outdated) WordPress.
- blowski 7y ago
  We run about 1,000 simple websites off the same Drupal codebase. Custom forms, page layouts, etc.

n42 7y ago

ever heard of Facebook? Slack? Etsy? WeWork? Box? Yelp? just to name a few.

verbify 7y ago
Or mediawiki

dennispeach 7y ago

Here’s one right here! In the world I’m in and the journey I’ve taken in my career of being in digital/dev for 10+ years, PHP is what I have based my dev foundations on. (albeit web rather than software) I am recruiting PHP developers for my team now, and they are out there, but maybe not here?! We make websites, and not a tremendous amount beyond that bar a few Laravel apps. I suspect we travel in totally different worlds?!