5 ms·

PHP maintains an enormous lead in server-side programming languages

18 points by throw0101a 5y ago

quantified 5y ago
If so, it should be possible for HN commemtators to chime in with notes that they do indeed use it somewhere in their stack. I’m guessing the usage in a web site is primarily Wordpress, which is pretty widespread. I doubt 70%+ of devs actually touch PHP in any given year.
- nikodunk 5y ago
  Agreed - although w3techs says it's only the top 10 million websites - this must be skewed heavily by Wordpress? I know the developer community is somewhat an echo chamber, but I doubt that Node, Rails, Go, etc are this much of a niche for web servers?
- kgeist 5y ago
  I used to think so, too - that PHP is mostly Wordpress and it's dying, its evolution stopped at PHP 5 and it's just better to avoid it.... But, by the will of fate, I ended up writing enterprise software in PHP, visiting PHP conferences, etc. and it made me realize how wrong I was. PHP is widely used in enterprise for mission-critical projects, in many large corporations, in distributed systems, in backends, it's not only about user-facing blogs; I guess it's not advertized much because PHP is old and "boring" as a language, but it does its job. Modern PHP7+ deprecates many of the old quirks, focuses on modern OOP practices, encourages type hinting, it's now one of the fastest interpreters; if you use something like Symfony/Doctrine then PHP feels more-less like Java/Spring/Hibernate but with faster prototyping/iteration times because PHP doesn't require compilation and there's less ceremony.
  - theamk 5y ago
    Maybe depends on the region? In my region (not SV), search on indeed.com gives me: php: 390 jobs, ruby: 870 jobs, python: 6140 jobs, java: 4140 jobs so it is certainly not the most popular language out there
- jv22222 5y ago
  PHP is a primary server side stack in lots of startups and unicorns. I've used it as a main server side stack in every startup I've worked in for the past 20 years. Others use it like Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, and many more. This is a good read: https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously/ https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously/ A lot of people don't like it because of how easy it is to get into. There was similar feeling about JavaScript back in the early 2000's. People felt that it was just script kiddies that copy/pasted JavaScript so it was not respectable (at that time). BTW Laravel, and the Laravel eco-system has also helped PHP become a fantastic option for any project no matter how big or small.
anm89 5y ago
Yeah because 90% of websites are probably things like static restaurant menu sites. so WordPress/php makes perfect sense in these cases.
vaxman 5y ago
PHP is still used by pubescent future billionaires and the now mid-career professionals that began their journey during the free market anomaly of 1995-2000 (an anomaly brought to you by The Architect of the Dystopia, a man worthy of an antagonist role on Dr. Who; that is, the ultimate responsible party for creating PPP/RAS.) PHP is also used by artisans from other genres that migrated to web tech later in life in search of (tech) "jobs". I would dare to add that, other than those who normally operate in technician-like capacities (including BPO roles), no serious software engineer would choose to initiate a new project in PHP. In PHP's defense though, the "language" was created to solve an actual purpose, which makes its existence 101% valid IMNSHO. That purpose tho, was a dude seeking to make it easier to update his online resume (bc ColdFusion cost bank during the economic nuclear winter that followed said market anomaly and LI didn't exist yet). Not knowing what to expect, but wanting to lay off hundreds of thousands of expensive American workers during that economic disaster (following the dot-com bubble), IBM adopted PHP for a short while and turned it into a "real" environment, training thousands of their BPO replacement workers to be used by it. At some point, Marky Mark and The Facebook Bunch made a compiler for PHP because they had trouble attracting workers during that era who were competent in other "languages". But, as the Industry began to refill with labor that knew there is no dash in mantissa ( https://www.leaseweb.com/labs/2013/06/the-php-floating-point-precision-is-wrong-by-default/ https://www.leaseweb.com/labs/2013/06/the-php-floating-point... ), PHP fell into an "everyday kind of socialist hell" (in the spirit of the "movement" by That Kid who grew up on the outskirts of the USSR and then formed an unholy alliance for bits of Hurd with that Sybok-like guy from MIT). PHP has been going sideways (="wasting millions of man hours on 'backwards compatibility issues' created for all major projects written in it") ever since. PHP should really come with its own theme song https://youtu.be/_KwA34pX6rg https://youtu.be/_KwA34pX6rg [ https://youtu.be/fLVN05Jl6wA https://youtu.be/fLVN05Jl6wA ]
theamk 5y ago
Wow, talk about bad reporting! The website says: > How to read the diagram: > PHP is used by 78.9% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know. So this graph only covers the languages which leak their names into headers. The “unknown” category is missing completely, and I bet it will be huge, possibly the biggest of all.
- tored 5y ago
  The survey uses multiple variables to figure out server side language.
  - theamk 5y ago
    Sure, but this is still going to be pretty limited when detecting non-PHP languages. How are you going to detect a language which puts no extra headers in HTTP response and has no associated extensions? But, luckily for us, w3techs lets you check individual websites... and the data is often wrong or missing github on server side is Javascript! https://w3techs.com/sites/info/github.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/github.com (it is actually Ruby) Djagoproject.com on server side is unknown! https://w3techs.com/sites/info/djangoproject.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/djangoproject.com (it is actually Django, which is a Python web framework: https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com) microsoft.com was using PHP and WordPress "unil recently" https://w3techs.com/sites/info/microsoft.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/microsoft.com gitlab.com is "ASP.NET, Python and Ruby (on subdomain) https://w3techs.com/sites/info/gitlab.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/gitlab.com google.com, youtube.com and amazon.com are unknown https://w3techs.com/sites/info/google.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/google.com etc.. ======== I stand by my opinion that w3techs is junk when determining types of server-side language. The only reason there are so much PHP is because PHP is the biggest major language left which is easy to detect. And they hide the low quality of the results it by not including "unknown" category in the graph -- with that category, it would be much clearer how bad their detection works.
    - tored 5y ago
      You are free to think that w3techs is junk, but you initial claim was wrong. https://w3techs.com/disclaimer https://w3techs.com/disclaimer

18 points by throw0101a 5y ago

If so, it should be possible for HN commemtators to chime in with notes that they do indeed use it somewhere in their stack. I’m guessing the usage in a web site is primarily Wordpress, which is pretty widespread. I doubt 70%+ of devs actually touch PHP in any given year.

nikodunk 5y ago
Agreed - although w3techs says it's only the top 10 million websites - this must be skewed heavily by Wordpress? I know the developer community is somewhat an echo chamber, but I doubt that Node, Rails, Go, etc are this much of a niche for web servers?
kgeist 5y ago
I used to think so, too - that PHP is mostly Wordpress and it's dying, its evolution stopped at PHP 5 and it's just better to avoid it.... But, by the will of fate, I ended up writing enterprise software in PHP, visiting PHP conferences, etc. and it made me realize how wrong I was. PHP is widely used in enterprise for mission-critical projects, in many large corporations, in distributed systems, in backends, it's not only about user-facing blogs; I guess it's not advertized much because PHP is old and "boring" as a language, but it does its job. Modern PHP7+ deprecates many of the old quirks, focuses on modern OOP practices, encourages type hinting, it's now one of the fastest interpreters; if you use something like Symfony/Doctrine then PHP feels more-less like Java/Spring/Hibernate but with faster prototyping/iteration times because PHP doesn't require compilation and there's less ceremony.
- theamk 5y ago
  Maybe depends on the region? In my region (not SV), search on indeed.com gives me: php: 390 jobs, ruby: 870 jobs, python: 6140 jobs, java: 4140 jobs so it is certainly not the most popular language out there
jv22222 5y ago
PHP is a primary server side stack in lots of startups and unicorns. I've used it as a main server side stack in every startup I've worked in for the past 20 years. Others use it like Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, and many more. This is a good read: https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously/ https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously/ A lot of people don't like it because of how easy it is to get into. There was similar feeling about JavaScript back in the early 2000's. People felt that it was just script kiddies that copy/pasted JavaScript so it was not respectable (at that time). BTW Laravel, and the Laravel eco-system has also helped PHP become a fantastic option for any project no matter how big or small.

anm89 5y ago

Yeah because 90% of websites are probably things like static restaurant menu sites. so WordPress/php makes perfect sense in these cases.

vaxman 5y ago

PHP is still used by pubescent future billionaires and the now mid-career professionals that began their journey during the free market anomaly of 1995-2000 (an anomaly brought to you by The Architect of the Dystopia, a man worthy of an antagonist role on Dr. Who; that is, the ultimate responsible party for creating PPP/RAS.) PHP is also used by artisans from other genres that migrated to web tech later in life in search of (tech) "jobs". I would dare to add that, other than those who normally operate in technician-like capacities (including BPO roles), no serious software engineer would choose to initiate a new project in PHP. In PHP's defense though, the "language" was created to solve an actual purpose, which makes its existence 101% valid IMNSHO. That purpose tho, was a dude seeking to make it easier to update his online resume (bc ColdFusion cost bank during the economic nuclear winter that followed said market anomaly and LI didn't exist yet). Not knowing what to expect, but wanting to lay off hundreds of thousands of expensive American workers during that economic disaster (following the dot-com bubble), IBM adopted PHP for a short while and turned it into a "real" environment, training thousands of their BPO replacement workers to be used by it. At some point, Marky Mark and The Facebook Bunch made a compiler for PHP because they had trouble attracting workers during that era who were competent in other "languages". But, as the Industry began to refill with labor that knew there is no dash in mantissa ( https://www.leaseweb.com/labs/2013/06/the-php-floating-point-precision-is-wrong-by-default/ https://www.leaseweb.com/labs/2013/06/the-php-floating-point... ), PHP fell into an "everyday kind of socialist hell" (in the spirit of the "movement" by That Kid who grew up on the outskirts of the USSR and then formed an unholy alliance for bits of Hurd with that Sybok-like guy from MIT). PHP has been going sideways (="wasting millions of man hours on 'backwards compatibility issues' created for all major projects written in it") ever since. PHP should really come with its own theme song https://youtu.be/_KwA34pX6rg https://youtu.be/_KwA34pX6rg [ https://youtu.be/fLVN05Jl6wA https://youtu.be/fLVN05Jl6wA ]

theamk 5y ago

Wow, talk about bad reporting! The website says: > How to read the diagram: > PHP is used by 78.9% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know. So this graph only covers the languages which leak their names into headers. The “unknown” category is missing completely, and I bet it will be huge, possibly the biggest of all.

tored 5y ago
The survey uses multiple variables to figure out server side language.
- theamk 5y ago
  Sure, but this is still going to be pretty limited when detecting non-PHP languages. How are you going to detect a language which puts no extra headers in HTTP response and has no associated extensions? But, luckily for us, w3techs lets you check individual websites... and the data is often wrong or missing github on server side is Javascript! https://w3techs.com/sites/info/github.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/github.com (it is actually Ruby) Djagoproject.com on server side is unknown! https://w3techs.com/sites/info/djangoproject.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/djangoproject.com (it is actually Django, which is a Python web framework: https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com) microsoft.com was using PHP and WordPress "unil recently" https://w3techs.com/sites/info/microsoft.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/microsoft.com gitlab.com is "ASP.NET, Python and Ruby (on subdomain) https://w3techs.com/sites/info/gitlab.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/gitlab.com google.com, youtube.com and amazon.com are unknown https://w3techs.com/sites/info/google.com https://w3techs.com/sites/info/google.com etc.. ======== I stand by my opinion that w3techs is junk when determining types of server-side language. The only reason there are so much PHP is because PHP is the biggest major language left which is easy to detect. And they hide the low quality of the results it by not including "unknown" category in the graph -- with that category, it would be much clearer how bad their detection works.
  - tored 5y ago
    You are free to think that w3techs is junk, but you initial claim was wrong. https://w3techs.com/disclaimer https://w3techs.com/disclaimer