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Biggest flaw of php to me is getting paid well and the number of jobs. From the stack overflow dev survey, php devs get paid much less than others. Laravel an

Biggest flaw of php to me is getting paid well and the number of jobs. From the stack overflow dev survey, php devs get paid much less than others. Laravel and php is a beast, super easy to use. All that annoying shit is setup for you. But, how many ppl hire Laravel devs? Job boards are stacked with react, vue etc. Personal use is great though.

Gigachad 4y ago
Community sentiment means almost as much as technical facts. PHP might be just as capable as Ruby, but the vast majority of devs, especially experienced ones, do not like it, will not suggest it, and will not apply for companies which use it. So all that’s left is low end wordpress jobs.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  > especially experienced ones, do not like it, will not suggest it, and will not apply for companies which use it. That's a bit of a reach, I would work for a company like Slack or Wikipedia of course even though they use PHP and so would many other devs. In fact the further I am into my career the less the tech stack matters to me; I've come to realize the bosses and the company's culture and leadership and how they generally treat employees is WAAYYY more important than whether the stack is Rails or Node or PHP. To me. They are all web stacks that do more or less the exact same thing and the work you do is really quite similar on all of them. I was sure being a Rubyist is what makes me happy because I like Ruby...well guess what, you can be miserable in a Ruby shop...that's the lesson I've learned. If I ever become super choosy about tech it's only because I really wanna switch directions - e.g do low level development or something like that which is dominated by C. But all the high level web languages ...are all the same to me (my preferences aside).
bigtunacan 4y ago
Honestly, this is the biggest reason to not use PHP. PHP Developers are significantly underpaid compared to pretty much all other devs.
zmxz 4y ago
I'm a PHP dev, I didn't take part in StackOverflow survey and ~15 senior PHP devs that I know personally didn't take part either. Judging on such a small sample, I'd be guessing that it's safe to assume that survey is missing crucial data from people who do get paid well. I'm 22 years in the business, 16 years working at the same place. At this point, there's various bonuses next to salary. After so many years, it's the domain knowledge and ability to figure problems out what gets me paid. I don't have to work with the tool that someone tells me to use, I'm free to choose language/stack that I think is appropriate to solve the problem (deliver the project that's maintainable/useful for the customer). I also don't take part in any surveys which makes the accuracy of the data questionable. There's plenty of people like me, what I learned is that a lot of senior/capable devs don't use social networks or sites like SO. Approach the results of the survey very careful, false data is dangerous.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  That's how sampling works, not everybody writing Java, Go, or whatever else is filling out surveys, either. I know I haven't. I haven't looked recently, are there a lot of remote positions for US employees writing PHP for $200k+ base plus bonuses? I'm not even talking about the crazy-high comp from FAANG companies here, just Principal developer roles paying more than $200k base, with bonuses as well. My anecdote and your anecdote combined don't make data, of course, but I know my comp climbed pretty dramatically when I left PHP behind.
  - zmxz 4y ago
    Our anecdotes don't make the data, of course. My point was that narrow thinking in terms of languages is inaccurate and cannot be relied upon when it comes to choices relating to career. Choosing the IT field because of compensation alone and then relying on top charts to choose the tech is what yields low quality. Ultimately, every dev with 2 decades of experience will know more than 1 language and learn that tribal language/framework wars aren't helping anyone. Getting things done and being of use is what our profession is. When one becomes useful, then the real career starts.

Gigachad 4y ago

Community sentiment means almost as much as technical facts. PHP might be just as capable as Ruby, but the vast majority of devs, especially experienced ones, do not like it, will not suggest it, and will not apply for companies which use it. So all that’s left is low end wordpress jobs.

weatherlite 4y ago
> especially experienced ones, do not like it, will not suggest it, and will not apply for companies which use it. That's a bit of a reach, I would work for a company like Slack or Wikipedia of course even though they use PHP and so would many other devs. In fact the further I am into my career the less the tech stack matters to me; I've come to realize the bosses and the company's culture and leadership and how they generally treat employees is WAAYYY more important than whether the stack is Rails or Node or PHP. To me. They are all web stacks that do more or less the exact same thing and the work you do is really quite similar on all of them. I was sure being a Rubyist is what makes me happy because I like Ruby...well guess what, you can be miserable in a Ruby shop...that's the lesson I've learned. If I ever become super choosy about tech it's only because I really wanna switch directions - e.g do low level development or something like that which is dominated by C. But all the high level web languages ...are all the same to me (my preferences aside).

bigtunacan 4y ago

Honestly, this is the biggest reason to not use PHP. PHP Developers are significantly underpaid compared to pretty much all other devs.

zmxz 4y ago

I'm a PHP dev, I didn't take part in StackOverflow survey and ~15 senior PHP devs that I know personally didn't take part either. Judging on such a small sample, I'd be guessing that it's safe to assume that survey is missing crucial data from people who do get paid well. I'm 22 years in the business, 16 years working at the same place. At this point, there's various bonuses next to salary. After so many years, it's the domain knowledge and ability to figure problems out what gets me paid. I don't have to work with the tool that someone tells me to use, I'm free to choose language/stack that I think is appropriate to solve the problem (deliver the project that's maintainable/useful for the customer). I also don't take part in any surveys which makes the accuracy of the data questionable. There's plenty of people like me, what I learned is that a lot of senior/capable devs don't use social networks or sites like SO. Approach the results of the survey very careful, false data is dangerous.

pwinnski 4y ago
That's how sampling works, not everybody writing Java, Go, or whatever else is filling out surveys, either. I know I haven't. I haven't looked recently, are there a lot of remote positions for US employees writing PHP for $200k+ base plus bonuses? I'm not even talking about the crazy-high comp from FAANG companies here, just Principal developer roles paying more than $200k base, with bonuses as well. My anecdote and your anecdote combined don't make data, of course, but I know my comp climbed pretty dramatically when I left PHP behind.
- zmxz 4y ago
  Our anecdotes don't make the data, of course. My point was that narrow thinking in terms of languages is inaccurate and cannot be relied upon when it comes to choices relating to career. Choosing the IT field because of compensation alone and then relying on top charts to choose the tech is what yields low quality. Ultimately, every dev with 2 decades of experience will know more than 1 language and learn that tribal language/framework wars aren't helping anyone. Getting things done and being of use is what our profession is. When one becomes useful, then the real career starts.