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PHP Popularity: Is it decreasing and what to do about it?

53 points by kugelblitz 3y ago

chinabot 3y ago
Personally, I'm not bothering to learn any new languages, stacks or APIs and will stick with what I know. AI will eventually (2-10 years) end up completely re-writing your whole program stack in machine code in whatever ISA without any bugs. The future of programming is a prompt engineer, write it in psudo code and english and output fully tested machine code.
- haweemwho 3y ago
  So, AI prompt is the new language/stack/API that you refuse to learn?
RadixDLT 3y ago
I understand php is gong through some transformations right now, if it were up to me I would rename php to "Elephant" with file extension of E
miohtama 3y ago
PHP popularity is decreasing because there are better tools for the same niche today. The same happened for Perl in 00s. The same is happening for every web backend language, as JavaScript is becoming ubique due to it being the de facto and only choice for the web frontend. Maybe PHP can be made better, but it would need some radical changes and then the question is that if it’s worth the effort and maybe to pick up some of the new tools instead.
- yvan 3y ago
  I am curious what are the radical changes you are thinking about that PHP needs.
- themodelplumber 3y ago
  What's the JS equivalent of "place an index.php file in a folder to deploy"? What's the JS FOSS equivalent of ProcessWire as a CMF + CMS? What's the JS equivalent to e.g. DreamHost and other drag + drop hosts? (Legitimately curious, and I'm mainly inquiring after equivalents-for...better-thans would definitely be interesting)
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    Do you really think the inability to create anything but an index.php file is the bottleneck? Those people just use drop-in tools now which are better than custom applications for a large portion of standard use cases.
    - themodelplumber 3y ago
      Bottleneck? Just asking what's the JS equivalent in convenience for deploying a simple project. It doesn't need to even look like index.php, just needs to be as convenient, ideally? Drop-in tools? Examples? I was using PHP drop-in tools back in 2004 but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
      - jahsome 3y ago
        Express and it's spiritual successors are the node "hello world" answers you're after, I think.
      - adoxyz 3y ago
        With node, install express, and run `node index.js` and you have a full blown server.
  - com2kid 3y ago
    For JS, you need to setup a listener like PM2 and point it at the folder, but once that is done, you can drag and drop and index.js file into place and it'll all work as expected.
  - 9dev 3y ago
- boringuser2 3y ago
  No, languages simply matter much less than they once did due to widespread adoption of best practices and good design. The tooling around languages matters much more. C++ isn't still popular because it's the best language. Only real reason I'd always pick PHP over JS is not because I love PHP, but because Laravel is better than any node framework.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    That's why I keep using PHP in my projects personally. Laravel is just so damn pleasant to work with.
  - miohtama 3y ago
    While you may pick, most developers do not. You are not the most developers, as you are special and probably much more talented. They pick JS because they know the language best and are more productive in it than in Laravel. There is nothing Laravel can do about it - being best is not going to change the direction, because the limiting factor is the knowledge of programming languages of most of developers.
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      They picked JS for the server because they have a choice in what languages they can run on the server, but they don't have a choice about what languages they can run in the browser, so JavaScript it is. There are HUGE advantages and efficiencies to using the same language in the browser and the server. Most developers are (rightfully) lazy and simply don't want to learn and juggle two different languages in two different places, when they can use simply one language everywhere. For example, when switching between PHP and JavaScript, you have to remember that the ?: ternary conditional operator in PHP has idiotic left-associativity, so you have to use extra parenthesis to disambiguate it, while the identical looking ?: ternary operator in JavaScript and all other languages has sane right-associativity. "I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that. I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." -Rasmus Lerdorf "We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this crap at all." -Rasmus Lerdorf
- asddubs 3y ago
  javascript has the advantage that front and backend can share code, but as a language it's much worse. php at least has been able to break backwards compat to fix its worst design mistakes, and natively has typing
- vi2837 3y ago
  There are few factors why PHP popularity is decreasing, not because it is really bad. But very often other languages build its popularity on promoting how "bad" is PHP. It is also no longer fashionable as it was in the beginning, but other language promoted as such. And more.. So, I think, rebranding and good marketing could help here.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  Php got complicated. So it’s value is decreasing.
- rafark 3y ago
  What are the better tools? Are you suggesting JavaScript is better? Exactly how?
atum47 3y ago
Professionally I work with python and node a lot, but everytime I need a backend for my personal projects PHP is my go to language.
- haweemwho 3y ago
  Would you like to elaborate your reasons?
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    I typically write ruby but I’ll grab PHP for simple web stuff because it’s really easy to throw nginx and php-fpm on a server and start coding. There is no app server or MVC to worry about. Every page is a template.
  - atum47 3y ago
    It was the first server language I learned. I mean, i did know how to program in java, but i mostly wrote java applets. I find php easy to write, i can get an API running with a few lines of code without any library, and I find it very easy to deploy.
123sereusername 3y ago
Celebrate!
- loa_in_ 3y ago
  With any luck Java will go away as well.
  - pritambarhate 3y ago
    May be not in start ups but in enterprise Java usage is increasing only.
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    Java is very much in ascendence.
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      Even if there weren't any technical reasons not to use Java or better alternatives, the elephant (or lawnmower) in the room is Oracle.
      - jahsome 3y ago
        C# is pretty good, but Visual Studio dependence is a crutch.
        oaiey 3y ago
        There is no Visual Studio dependency. The VS Code / editor experience is on par with most other languages and Rider is surely more than capable JetBrains based alternative
        jahsome 3y ago
        I meant developer dependence, not language dependence. I recognize visual studio isn't required, but in the wild, the vast majority of C# devs I work with never leave VS.
loa_in_ 3y ago
Work on transpilers to whatever is used instead and port existing libraries or support PHP frameworks in other technologies. This is to reuse existing experience and code.
Minor49er 3y ago
PHP has already been "rebranded". When people try to dunk on PHP for supposedly being awful, people are quick to point out that that's all from "pre-PHP 5.6" and that "PHP 7/8" are bringing all kinds of excellent features, functionalities, and refinements The author links to the person thinking that HypeScript is a good name. He says: "The name HypeScript sounds like a logical name for me, it pays its respect to the name PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) as well." That would be like suggesting that IBM rebrand itself "BizCompany" to pay respect to its own name (?)
- Gys 3y ago
  Did not read the article, but hyperscript already exists: https://hyperscript.org/ https://hyperscript.org/
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    No, he suggested HypeScript, not HyperScript. That's the joke.
- karmakaze 3y ago
  I thought PHP came from Personal Home Page(s). Edit: Wikipedia says "PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor."
haweemwho 3y ago
> what to do about it? Celebrate.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Every-one around the world, come on!
droptablemain 3y ago
PHP has been supposedly dying for 15 years. It's always been super trendy to dunk on it, but in many respects it remains the best tool for specific jobs. And that's what matters. A language's hip factor is not particularly important to me.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  This is what I call "The Fishtank Graph" (for obvious reasons). It kinda says it all... https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin...
happytiger 3y ago
The issue I see is twofold. 1) First, understand that one audience matters particularly for programming language popularity, and that is people who are starting their careers. If you learn a language and use it for a few years, it tends to be a language you continue to use throughout your careers. Here, we have no data. But I can tell you as someone who works with a lot of early stage startups and 20-somethings who are diving headfirst into programming for their startups for the first time, the language of choice is Python, followed by Javascript of some kind. I have a long history with PHP and dearly love it as a language, but the concern I have is that it's not getting picked up like it was. Still love using it, and boy is Laravel productive for a small team. That said, this is anecdotal, and I don't have any data here as the programming language surveys are always so broad they don't really have this kind of segmentation to spot early trends. Curious what others are seeing however... 2) Second, as chinabot pointed out, in the short term, AI is likely to supplement the work of programmers, making certain tasks faster and more efficient. However, as AI becomes more sophisticated and capable in the long term, it has the potential to largely replace a lot of programmers. In particular, AI's ability to automate the coding process means that many routine programming jobs may become unnecessary. While this shift may take some time, it's important for those in the programming industry to keep an eye on emerging AI technologies and be prepared for changes to come. Does that imply that languages that are for working with AI would be the better programming languages to learn? Python, Julia, C++, Java and R are the current core languages in AI land. I don't think it matters in the short term, but the AI shift looks so big it could matter a lot in coming years. IDK, doesn't look quite as cohesive and convincing as arguments after I wrote them down, but there are some pretty interesting points in here so I'll post it anyways to add to the discussion.
sourcecodeplz 3y ago
PHP is still what I use for my personal projects. Sublime + SFTP plugin & any shared hosting (all also give at least 1 MySQL). Phpmyadmin I know with my eyes closed but can also default to a static db like SQLite. It is very fast for me to start, test & itterate. I've also tried Node but idk sometimes it can hugg memory and even crash, which just never happened with PHP. It is a little sad but I don't really care anymore because I am not doing client work anymore. Edit: just to add that I also never really could stand promises in async execution. Such a headache. Edit 2: also can you believe it that with Node, the script is also the server??? Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? Like when the script crashed, it crashed the whole app for everyone.
- vichle 3y ago
  Sounds like you've just used node incorrectly, like without any error handling or frameworks? Pure node has always been pretty bad until very recently, the ecosystem is a big part of what has made it popular.
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  PHP isn't bad at all. People are just hating because it's not the greatest language. People are making millions with PHP. The end user doesn't care and tbh the ecosystem is awesome
- piperswe 3y ago
  > also can you believe it that with Node, the script is also the server??? That is how most modern web systems operate. It's very rarely a problem, because decent error handling (built in to most frameworks) limits the scope of these sorts of issues to a single request. IIRC, all of the major Node.js HTTP frameworks will catch exceptions for you and respond with a generic 500; I'm not sure what sort of system you had where your errors were bubbling up further.
DonHopkins 3y ago
> Without steps like the big improvements in PHP 7 and laravel, PHP could potentially already be irrelevant today. So what? What's wrong with PHP becoming irrelevant? Surely nobody would complain that ColdFusion is finally irrelevant. People should focus their time and energy on better solutions than PHP or ColdFusion.
- ihatepython 3y ago
  > People should focus their time and energy on better solutions than PHP or ColdFusion. Yes they should, but none of the 'solutions' are actually much better. We should all just accept the cold, hard reality that the web was a huge mistake and never should have been created. Nothing good has come from the web. Personally I was much happier with usenet, ftp, and gopher.
pathartl 3y ago
I went from a WP/Laravel dev to .NET Framework and now .NET 5+. For me PHP has always suffered from two primary camps: ancient codebases that people don't dare touch, and poor tooling. The former came mostly from the PHP camp. The lack of OOP where it was pretty desperately needed was unproductive at best, and at worst yielded a codebase that was so unmaintainable we had to double any time estimates for backend work. For tooling Laravel, at least the last time I touched it, was pretty good with its scaffolding. Relying on Composer was also very welcome. Using IDEs like PhpStorm was pretty good, but took a lot of configuration. The one thing that really burned me, however, was the amount of effort it took to get a debugger actually working. I am certain the climate is better now, but at the time almost no emphasis was put on actually using a debugger for development. You could get Xdebug running, but you have to know how to configure your local dev hosting environment properly. If you used a prebuilt package like your WAMPs or XAMPPs or whatever you, you got 90% there, but it's so bloated and didn't reflect your production environments. Vagrant was great... if you spent the time to configure your Vagrantfile with a lot of testing. These days it takes about 30 minutes to reinstall Windows, install VS, clone my project, hit the run button and I'm off to the races. Is everything frictionless? No, of course not, but I can get to actually building my application without pulling my hair out.
- whatsu 3y ago
  I've been working with PHP for years, and to this day, I struggle to make xdebug work. I don't think it's a genuinely good debugger, which is something that PHP sorely lacks and is a negative aspect of the language.
  - pathartl 3y ago
    At this point it makes the language/platform a complete non-starter for me. var_dump or echo or print is just not proper debugging. Especially once you level up your debugger skills and utilize more of the functionality rather than just setting basic breakpoints.
  - rafark 3y ago
    I thought it was only me! Xdebug is sheet. I broke my keyboard a few weeks ago out of pure frustration.
samsquire 3y ago
I like the php-fpm design of having a persistent server to run code rather than starting a process for every request. I would like the convenience of replacing one file somewhere and have the file be picked up by the server, similar to PHP. I would also like to separate release and deploy and do an atomic load of the server. I think there are Clojure projects to preload the JVM.
- slim 3y ago
  what do you mean by separate release and deploy?
  - samsquire 3y ago
    Deploying the files to the server and releasing the feature can be separated in time. So when I upload the new version of the code, I can decide to release the feature when I choose to, rather than automatically at deployment time. I think people use feature toggles to separate release and deploy.
doublerabbit 3y ago
Like any programming language, encourage others to produce their own rather then just dumping "Use Symphony" "Use Flask" "Use Angler" "Use React". This goes for all programming langs, the approach of "I know, lets use xFramework!" is flawed -- you end up with a generic X-lang website which caps your creativity because your locked in to using a framework based upon decisions of the developer. You add your stuff to it, dev updates the framework and you find out your stuff is broken because of some change. Frameworks restrict. If people started to code their own like back in the day of PHPNuke, PHPCms, e107, PHPBB.. -- these languages wouldn't die. Not to add that the ecosystems of these frameworks are so fragile you end up with a convoluted mess where your stuck with the paradigm of the framework rather than your own design. This adds more further complication where your forced to abandon later on in the game or continue to be sucker punched because you want Z function, which won't be pushed in to the framework. You then create your own Z function but this adds overhead because any future update to the framework has potential of breaking your own function. I'm an advocate to stop using frameworks. As a black smith does in making a hammer to smeld a tool to create an object. All takes time and effort, skills to develop. But when you do, the satisifaction is so worth it. Creating nothing is something; then from nothing creating something is an amazing feel. The wisdom, knowledge, hackery is far and beyond, you grow as a person. You end making something unique, something that no-one has ever made before. You have your own product. Using a framework is skipping that step and using what someone else has created rather then your own. Yes, controversial, you should be reinventing the wheel. Because if your not, your stuck with a pre-defined wheel where you are forced down a path of restrictions. Granted exceptions can be made if it's for corporate bandwagon but where's the individually of coding gone?
mgkimsal 3y ago
Some folks will never come to it, some folks will stick with it (like me). Language is language. The value prop for most orgs using tech is the ecosystem. The PHP ecosystem is large, and has a lot of good quality stuff available. Building on laravel or symfony, or using products and services built around those, can be a big advantage over some other tech. There are always examples and counter-examples, and usually a decision will come down to "you should use what a team is already skilled in". That's the pragmatic answer. You have a team of .net folks... don't jump to express or flask or laravel because of some benchmark or neat article or resume-driven-development. Stay in the .net world, and use what you know. That has to be balanced with "what you know may go away, so be ready to learn new things". Maintaining a balance, both for yourself, as well as the tech in your organizations, is something to regularly be aware of. I love PHP. I like web stuff overall. Over the last... 30 years of software dev, what I've noticed is that the really useful/good ideas tend to get implemented in various languages if they're useful. The sign of a useful library can often be that there's multiple implementations of it. We saw a productized "web mvc" launch rails, and we then saw a dozen variations in other languages take the essential parts, implement them, and good ideas have flown between various tech camps for years since. There are counterpoints to that. A colleague is doing some work in SciPy, and there doesn't seem to be an equivalent outside python. In PHP, we have FlySystem, and I've not yet seen an equivalent outside PHP. I've seen some attempts, but they tend to have one or two adapters, and that's it. Overall, language diffs are often/mostly personal preferences. Your project or business isn't failing because your language of choice can't connect to a database quickly enough, or that you can't write data to filesystem, or whatever. But if you've spent X years with tech Y, you will likely be faster than learning something new (and learning the idiomatic methods of that new tech). Figuring out when to dig deeper, and when to move on... again - no single choice on that. I may have shared it before, but I saw a company moving new dev away from PHP, and moved to a combination of python and node. "It's so much easier to hire people!" But... they were largely hiring jr and mid level people, and they were doing greenfield redevelopment of some of the PHP stuff. And... they'd attempted a rebuild of the PHP stuff once, but made the same mistake as the first time; primarily one person, working on their own, often offsite, not interacting with other people. Moving to python/node, they hired more/cheaper people, and the rewriting team required everyone to work together. The languages were pointed to as the reason behind some of the early success, but it was far more the processes around the development that provided the success. With enough people, forced to write cleaner code the whole group can understand, as well as requiring tests and documentation... yes, the outcome is going to be better than requiring one person to build a lot of stuff on their own, without providing adequate time for testing, documentation, or collaboration with others. Likely most of us have come across enough bad JS/Python/Perl/PHP/Java/C#/etc to understand the quality of the code is only tangentially related to the language, and far more about the processes and expectations set around the development.
fimdomeio 3y ago
New languages are hopefully made taking into account all the lessons learned from previous mistakes older languages made. Old languages can't change too much or they just become hell to upgrade, so they can't compete with the newer ones. I don't think there's much of a problem with this. But I will still setup a wordpress if I need a quick site.
edsrzf 3y ago
The world that PHP grew up in has changed. The language and community have matured, and in the process PHP has lost most of its competitive advantage: low barrier to entry. It used to be: * Moving from static HTML to dynamic server code was a matter of changing file extension and adding PHP tags. * Many shared hosting services supported PHP. * Deploying was a matter of copying files to the server. Projects that started from HTML + PHP tags grew and became unmaintainable messes. The PHP community learned from this and evolved in a different direction. You can still _write_ PHP code in the old way, but it's strongly discouraged and (rightfully) seen as a bad practice. You don't even use PHP as a templating language anymore. Symfony and Laravel have their own templating languages that dynamically compile to PHP. Modern PHP code looks very much like Java or C# -- classes, OO design patterns, and so on. Except in most ways, it's worse than Java or C#. Why would anyone start a new project in PHP? Deploy models have also changed. You're usually not copying files to servers, but deploying Docker images or other formats. PHP has no particular advantage in this new world. If PHP wants to turn things around, it needs to figure out what makes it unique or better than other languages. Right now, there's really nothing.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  They’re solving problems for people who are stuck using PHP, not trying to find a market niche.
  - acdha 3y ago
    That can work for a while but it doesn’t attract new developers, and it tends to have legacy projects be replaced outright with new ones in better languages.
    - asdfman123 3y ago
      If anyone needs a quick scripting language, there’s JavaScript or Python. There’s no niche that PHP needs to fill except for “a language for people who don’t want to move off of PHP.”
      - 3y ago
leke 3y ago
Meh, at this point it doesn't matter. There's so much (bad) php code out there that needs to be maintained, any person who learns to write good php has a job for life. But I've always said that PHP's popularity was due to its availability on free hosting providers. However nowadays, you can get free hosting for a plethora of languages. So more competition, and also there are so many more languages that are competing for the backend nowadays.
mike503 3y ago
It's because PHP isn't simple anymore. It requires an IDE, it's likely using a framework (at least Laravel seems relatively sanely designed), and everyone wants to make it contain all the features (and most importantly syntaxes) of all their favorite other languages. If you're using an IDE already pretty much any language could be the same.
entropicgravity 3y ago
Mother Mary came to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
- archerx 3y ago
  I like that PHP is not popular and looked down upon by the masses. There is so much less drama in the communities, there isn't a new resume driven framework made every other week, no one is try to spike extensions with malware, no real build system, so much less bullshit. Its like everyone one who uses PHP is to busy making stuff to be stirring drama online while the PHP core has been steadily getting better for the past few years. It’s super cozy and honestly I don’t want it to get popular again so it can remain drama free and cozy.
  - porker 3y ago
    > There is so much less drama in the communities I'd hate to see the other communities then! I think of PHP communities as full of drama, whether that's fads and dogmatism (which usually changes every 3-5 years) or people lacking interpersonal skills and unable to keep conversations civil.
  - asdfman123 3y ago
    I used to think like you did, and in my case all of that sort of reasoning was based at some level on fear of success. I settled for writing frumpy code at frumpy companies for years, but my life got better when I tried to chase after things a little more.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  PHP, PHP, PHP, PHP. Speaking words of wisdom, PHP.
  - owenpalmer 3y ago
    Yes
pauljurczak 3y ago
Let it die...
fndex 3y ago
Please do nothing. Just let it die as it should have had already.
- archerx 3y ago
  Give me one good reason why PHP should die. Hard mode don’t regurgitate the cargo cultish dogmas.
cozzyd 3y ago
Its appeal is becoming more selective.
jhoelzel 3y ago
Having converted a couple of PHP projects to modern languages and maintained way more than i care to admit: Its not going anywhere. Or at least in europe its not. Symfony et al have matured enough so they are usuable for allmost everything web related and if you dont plan to be the next google homepage, it will carry you VERY far. Is it pretty? No. Is it efficient? No. But you will be able to find 10 coders for the price of 4, that will have your project iterate until you need something bigger and better. If you do not hate your staff, by then they can easily pick up golang and convert into microservices, taking it down piece by piece and making the parts more efficient that need it.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  I can confirm, most European ISP keep only offering PHP and Perl on their cheapest hosting price plans, PHP is here to stay.
- pankajdoharey 3y ago
  There is no structure, OO was an after thought, meta-programming an after thought., unit testing, testing utilities and frameworks an afterthought, their best Web-framework Laravel is a clone of Rails, No original good ideas in the PHP Community and thats the problem. The reason is PHP is a poor clone of Perl.
  - KyeRussell 3y ago
    I was with you until the end. Originally doesn’t mean shit. Who cares if Laravel is a Rails clone? For the record, I have no idea if it is, let alone if it is beyond the degree that plenty of other things are “Rails clones”. And this is ignoring the fact that Rails had been inspired plenty by other projects throughout its lifetime, as it should. I’m interested in using the right tool for the job, not getting caught up in weird inside baseball attribution wars. IMO, PHP is often not the best tool because it’s a shitty language. If it has a “Rails clone”, that makes it better, not worse.
    - deleted 3y ago
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butz 3y ago
PHP CMSs are not as relevant today, as they were years before. Nowadays you can quickly generate a static website using Hugo or 11ty and host it on Netlify or Cloudflare Pages for free.
- sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  Dynamic is what you build with PHP.
jt2190 3y ago
I’m a long-time JavaScripter, and after years of working with Java backends and also some time with NodeJS/Express I’ve been working with a PHP backend at my current gig. A few observations: * PHP documentation sucks. It’s demonstrably incomplete in important cases, and I guess to make up for it they allow anyone with a browser to add comments and examples, many which are distracting and very poor quality. Furthermore, things that start mattering at scale, like memory management, database connection configuration, etc. seem to be solved but completely undocumented. * As a result the internet is littered with millions of additional “happy path” examples, many of which are outdated as well. * PHP doesn’t have a big corporate sponsor who is putting serious resources towards improving documentation, tooling and other resources. I would love for Facebook or Etsy or someone who’s gotten a lot of milage out of PHP to take the lead here. * PHP is European/Israeli led (in the sense that many core devs seem to be there), and a lot of materials don’t seem to cross the pond. (Maybe we Americans put more value in hype and marketing… I don’t know.) * PHP has warts, which “senior” devs nit-pick mercilessly, yet it really isn’t any worse than JavaScript in that regard. (For some TypeScript-hidden runtime bugs are culturally allowed to be ignored, because TypeScript is cool. JavaScript/Node forces you to use an event loop whether that makes sense or not. Etc.) * Again, without a large, corporate backer, anyone thinking about “career” worries about getting a job, because there are not large corporate backers. (See how this works?) The whole situation reminds me of where JavaScript was around 2010: Things have gotten seriously better but the wider-world had not caught on yet. PHP has some very impressive engineering and has proven itself again and again as a solid option, that is, it’s not perfect but it’s good enough. Where it ends up is hard to say: Maybe it’ll end up like BSD Unix, with ardent fans but not the most popular kid.
- rafark 3y ago
  Actually I think php docs are one of the best in class, the api at least. Try python, very little (and cluttered) official docs.
jacooper 3y ago
I'm not a developer, but my experience with php web apps hasn't been great. They always feel janky and slow, wordpress nextcloud and so on. That's why owncloud created a go version.
EcUnekca 3y ago
Just let it die. I would happily move to different languages
treadmill 3y ago
Accelerate it any way imaginable.
phendrenad2 3y ago
I sympathize with people who built a career on PHP, but the time to move on has long since passed. PHP should, in my opinion, go into maintenance mode. It's just too far out of sync with how software development is done these days. I still like using it for personal projects, so selfishly, I hope they don't try to modernize it too much and ruin the simplicity.

53 points by kugelblitz 3y ago

Personally, I'm not bothering to learn any new languages, stacks or APIs and will stick with what I know. AI will eventually (2-10 years) end up completely re-writing your whole program stack in machine code in whatever ISA without any bugs. The future of programming is a prompt engineer, write it in psudo code and english and output fully tested machine code.

haweemwho 3y ago
So, AI prompt is the new language/stack/API that you refuse to learn?

RadixDLT 3y ago

I understand php is gong through some transformations right now, if it were up to me I would rename php to "Elephant" with file extension of E

miohtama 3y ago

PHP popularity is decreasing because there are better tools for the same niche today. The same happened for Perl in 00s. The same is happening for every web backend language, as JavaScript is becoming ubique due to it being the de facto and only choice for the web frontend. Maybe PHP can be made better, but it would need some radical changes and then the question is that if it’s worth the effort and maybe to pick up some of the new tools instead.

yvan 3y ago
I am curious what are the radical changes you are thinking about that PHP needs.
themodelplumber 3y ago
What's the JS equivalent of "place an index.php file in a folder to deploy"? What's the JS FOSS equivalent of ProcessWire as a CMF + CMS? What's the JS equivalent to e.g. DreamHost and other drag + drop hosts? (Legitimately curious, and I'm mainly inquiring after equivalents-for...better-thans would definitely be interesting)
- boringuser2 3y ago
  Do you really think the inability to create anything but an index.php file is the bottleneck? Those people just use drop-in tools now which are better than custom applications for a large portion of standard use cases.
  - themodelplumber 3y ago
    Bottleneck? Just asking what's the JS equivalent in convenience for deploying a simple project. It doesn't need to even look like index.php, just needs to be as convenient, ideally? Drop-in tools? Examples? I was using PHP drop-in tools back in 2004 but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
    - jahsome 3y ago
      Express and it's spiritual successors are the node "hello world" answers you're after, I think.
    - adoxyz 3y ago
      With node, install express, and run `node index.js` and you have a full blown server.
- com2kid 3y ago
  For JS, you need to setup a listener like PM2 and point it at the folder, but once that is done, you can drag and drop and index.js file into place and it'll all work as expected.
- 9dev 3y ago
boringuser2 3y ago
No, languages simply matter much less than they once did due to widespread adoption of best practices and good design. The tooling around languages matters much more. C++ isn't still popular because it's the best language. Only real reason I'd always pick PHP over JS is not because I love PHP, but because Laravel is better than any node framework.
- happytiger 3y ago
  That's why I keep using PHP in my projects personally. Laravel is just so damn pleasant to work with.
- miohtama 3y ago
  While you may pick, most developers do not. You are not the most developers, as you are special and probably much more talented. They pick JS because they know the language best and are more productive in it than in Laravel. There is nothing Laravel can do about it - being best is not going to change the direction, because the limiting factor is the knowledge of programming languages of most of developers.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    They picked JS for the server because they have a choice in what languages they can run on the server, but they don't have a choice about what languages they can run in the browser, so JavaScript it is. There are HUGE advantages and efficiencies to using the same language in the browser and the server. Most developers are (rightfully) lazy and simply don't want to learn and juggle two different languages in two different places, when they can use simply one language everywhere. For example, when switching between PHP and JavaScript, you have to remember that the ?: ternary conditional operator in PHP has idiotic left-associativity, so you have to use extra parenthesis to disambiguate it, while the identical looking ?: ternary operator in JavaScript and all other languages has sane right-associativity. "I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that. I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -Rasmus Lerdorf "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." -Rasmus Lerdorf "We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this crap at all." -Rasmus Lerdorf
asddubs 3y ago
javascript has the advantage that front and backend can share code, but as a language it's much worse. php at least has been able to break backwards compat to fix its worst design mistakes, and natively has typing
vi2837 3y ago
There are few factors why PHP popularity is decreasing, not because it is really bad. But very often other languages build its popularity on promoting how "bad" is PHP. It is also no longer fashionable as it was in the beginning, but other language promoted as such. And more.. So, I think, rebranding and good marketing could help here.
nashashmi 3y ago
Php got complicated. So it’s value is decreasing.
rafark 3y ago
What are the better tools? Are you suggesting JavaScript is better? Exactly how?

atum47 3y ago

Professionally I work with python and node a lot, but everytime I need a backend for my personal projects PHP is my go to language.

haweemwho 3y ago
Would you like to elaborate your reasons?
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  I typically write ruby but I’ll grab PHP for simple web stuff because it’s really easy to throw nginx and php-fpm on a server and start coding. There is no app server or MVC to worry about. Every page is a template.
- atum47 3y ago
  It was the first server language I learned. I mean, i did know how to program in java, but i mostly wrote java applets. I find php easy to write, i can get an API running with a few lines of code without any library, and I find it very easy to deploy.

123sereusername 3y ago

Celebrate!

loa_in_ 3y ago
With any luck Java will go away as well.
- pritambarhate 3y ago
  May be not in start ups but in enterprise Java usage is increasing only.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  Java is very much in ascendence.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Even if there weren't any technical reasons not to use Java or better alternatives, the elephant (or lawnmower) in the room is Oracle.
    - jahsome 3y ago
      C# is pretty good, but Visual Studio dependence is a crutch.
      - oaiey 3y ago
        There is no Visual Studio dependency. The VS Code / editor experience is on par with most other languages and Rider is surely more than capable JetBrains based alternative
        jahsome 3y ago
        I meant developer dependence, not language dependence. I recognize visual studio isn't required, but in the wild, the vast majority of C# devs I work with never leave VS.

loa_in_ 3y ago

Work on transpilers to whatever is used instead and port existing libraries or support PHP frameworks in other technologies. This is to reuse existing experience and code.

Minor49er 3y ago

PHP has already been "rebranded". When people try to dunk on PHP for supposedly being awful, people are quick to point out that that's all from "pre-PHP 5.6" and that "PHP 7/8" are bringing all kinds of excellent features, functionalities, and refinements The author links to the person thinking that HypeScript is a good name. He says: "The name HypeScript sounds like a logical name for me, it pays its respect to the name PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) as well." That would be like suggesting that IBM rebrand itself "BizCompany" to pay respect to its own name (?)

Gys 3y ago
Did not read the article, but hyperscript already exists: https://hyperscript.org/ https://hyperscript.org/
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  No, he suggested HypeScript, not HyperScript. That's the joke.
karmakaze 3y ago
I thought PHP came from Personal Home Page(s). Edit: Wikipedia says "PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor."

haweemwho 3y ago

> what to do about it? Celebrate.

mixmastamyk 3y ago
Every-one around the world, come on!

droptablemain 3y ago

PHP has been supposedly dying for 15 years. It's always been super trendy to dunk on it, but in many respects it remains the best tool for specific jobs. And that's what matters. A language's hip factor is not particularly important to me.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
This is what I call "The Fishtank Graph" (for obvious reasons). It kinda says it all... https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin...

happytiger 3y ago

The issue I see is twofold. 1) First, understand that one audience matters particularly for programming language popularity, and that is people who are starting their careers. If you learn a language and use it for a few years, it tends to be a language you continue to use throughout your careers. Here, we have no data. But I can tell you as someone who works with a lot of early stage startups and 20-somethings who are diving headfirst into programming for their startups for the first time, the language of choice is Python, followed by Javascript of some kind. I have a long history with PHP and dearly love it as a language, but the concern I have is that it's not getting picked up like it was. Still love using it, and boy is Laravel productive for a small team. That said, this is anecdotal, and I don't have any data here as the programming language surveys are always so broad they don't really have this kind of segmentation to spot early trends. Curious what others are seeing however... 2) Second, as chinabot pointed out, in the short term, AI is likely to supplement the work of programmers, making certain tasks faster and more efficient. However, as AI becomes more sophisticated and capable in the long term, it has the potential to largely replace a lot of programmers. In particular, AI's ability to automate the coding process means that many routine programming jobs may become unnecessary. While this shift may take some time, it's important for those in the programming industry to keep an eye on emerging AI technologies and be prepared for changes to come. Does that imply that languages that are for working with AI would be the better programming languages to learn? Python, Julia, C++, Java and R are the current core languages in AI land. I don't think it matters in the short term, but the AI shift looks so big it could matter a lot in coming years. IDK, doesn't look quite as cohesive and convincing as arguments after I wrote them down, but there are some pretty interesting points in here so I'll post it anyways to add to the discussion.

sourcecodeplz 3y ago

PHP is still what I use for my personal projects. Sublime + SFTP plugin & any shared hosting (all also give at least 1 MySQL). Phpmyadmin I know with my eyes closed but can also default to a static db like SQLite. It is very fast for me to start, test & itterate. I've also tried Node but idk sometimes it can hugg memory and even crash, which just never happened with PHP. It is a little sad but I don't really care anymore because I am not doing client work anymore. Edit: just to add that I also never really could stand promises in async execution. Such a headache. Edit 2: also can you believe it that with Node, the script is also the server??? Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? Like when the script crashed, it crashed the whole app for everyone.

vichle 3y ago
Sounds like you've just used node incorrectly, like without any error handling or frameworks? Pure node has always been pretty bad until very recently, the ecosystem is a big part of what has made it popular.
DoesntMatter22 3y ago
PHP isn't bad at all. People are just hating because it's not the greatest language. People are making millions with PHP. The end user doesn't care and tbh the ecosystem is awesome
piperswe 3y ago
> also can you believe it that with Node, the script is also the server??? That is how most modern web systems operate. It's very rarely a problem, because decent error handling (built in to most frameworks) limits the scope of these sorts of issues to a single request. IIRC, all of the major Node.js HTTP frameworks will catch exceptions for you and respond with a generic 500; I'm not sure what sort of system you had where your errors were bubbling up further.

DonHopkins 3y ago

> Without steps like the big improvements in PHP 7 and laravel, PHP could potentially already be irrelevant today. So what? What's wrong with PHP becoming irrelevant? Surely nobody would complain that ColdFusion is finally irrelevant. People should focus their time and energy on better solutions than PHP or ColdFusion.

ihatepython 3y ago
> People should focus their time and energy on better solutions than PHP or ColdFusion. Yes they should, but none of the 'solutions' are actually much better. We should all just accept the cold, hard reality that the web was a huge mistake and never should have been created. Nothing good has come from the web. Personally I was much happier with usenet, ftp, and gopher.

pathartl 3y ago

I went from a WP/Laravel dev to .NET Framework and now .NET 5+. For me PHP has always suffered from two primary camps: ancient codebases that people don't dare touch, and poor tooling. The former came mostly from the PHP camp. The lack of OOP where it was pretty desperately needed was unproductive at best, and at worst yielded a codebase that was so unmaintainable we had to double any time estimates for backend work. For tooling Laravel, at least the last time I touched it, was pretty good with its scaffolding. Relying on Composer was also very welcome. Using IDEs like PhpStorm was pretty good, but took a lot of configuration. The one thing that really burned me, however, was the amount of effort it took to get a debugger actually working. I am certain the climate is better now, but at the time almost no emphasis was put on actually using a debugger for development. You could get Xdebug running, but you have to know how to configure your local dev hosting environment properly. If you used a prebuilt package like your WAMPs or XAMPPs or whatever you, you got 90% there, but it's so bloated and didn't reflect your production environments. Vagrant was great... if you spent the time to configure your Vagrantfile with a lot of testing. These days it takes about 30 minutes to reinstall Windows, install VS, clone my project, hit the run button and I'm off to the races. Is everything frictionless? No, of course not, but I can get to actually building my application without pulling my hair out.

whatsu 3y ago
I've been working with PHP for years, and to this day, I struggle to make xdebug work. I don't think it's a genuinely good debugger, which is something that PHP sorely lacks and is a negative aspect of the language.
- pathartl 3y ago
  At this point it makes the language/platform a complete non-starter for me. var_dump or echo or print is just not proper debugging. Especially once you level up your debugger skills and utilize more of the functionality rather than just setting basic breakpoints.
- rafark 3y ago
  I thought it was only me! Xdebug is sheet. I broke my keyboard a few weeks ago out of pure frustration.

samsquire 3y ago

I like the php-fpm design of having a persistent server to run code rather than starting a process for every request. I would like the convenience of replacing one file somewhere and have the file be picked up by the server, similar to PHP. I would also like to separate release and deploy and do an atomic load of the server. I think there are Clojure projects to preload the JVM.

slim 3y ago
what do you mean by separate release and deploy?
- samsquire 3y ago
  Deploying the files to the server and releasing the feature can be separated in time. So when I upload the new version of the code, I can decide to release the feature when I choose to, rather than automatically at deployment time. I think people use feature toggles to separate release and deploy.

doublerabbit 3y ago

Like any programming language, encourage others to produce their own rather then just dumping "Use Symphony" "Use Flask" "Use Angler" "Use React". This goes for all programming langs, the approach of "I know, lets use xFramework!" is flawed -- you end up with a generic X-lang website which caps your creativity because your locked in to using a framework based upon decisions of the developer. You add your stuff to it, dev updates the framework and you find out your stuff is broken because of some change. Frameworks restrict. If people started to code their own like back in the day of PHPNuke, PHPCms, e107, PHPBB.. -- these languages wouldn't die. Not to add that the ecosystems of these frameworks are so fragile you end up with a convoluted mess where your stuck with the paradigm of the framework rather than your own design. This adds more further complication where your forced to abandon later on in the game or continue to be sucker punched because you want Z function, which won't be pushed in to the framework. You then create your own Z function but this adds overhead because any future update to the framework has potential of breaking your own function. I'm an advocate to stop using frameworks. As a black smith does in making a hammer to smeld a tool to create an object. All takes time and effort, skills to develop. But when you do, the satisifaction is so worth it. Creating nothing is something; then from nothing creating something is an amazing feel. The wisdom, knowledge, hackery is far and beyond, you grow as a person. You end making something unique, something that no-one has ever made before. You have your own product. Using a framework is skipping that step and using what someone else has created rather then your own. Yes, controversial, you should be reinventing the wheel. Because if your not, your stuck with a pre-defined wheel where you are forced down a path of restrictions. Granted exceptions can be made if it's for corporate bandwagon but where's the individually of coding gone?

mgkimsal 3y ago

Some folks will never come to it, some folks will stick with it (like me). Language is language. The value prop for most orgs using tech is the ecosystem. The PHP ecosystem is large, and has a lot of good quality stuff available. Building on laravel or symfony, or using products and services built around those, can be a big advantage over some other tech. There are always examples and counter-examples, and usually a decision will come down to "you should use what a team is already skilled in". That's the pragmatic answer. You have a team of .net folks... don't jump to express or flask or laravel because of some benchmark or neat article or resume-driven-development. Stay in the .net world, and use what you know. That has to be balanced with "what you know may go away, so be ready to learn new things". Maintaining a balance, both for yourself, as well as the tech in your organizations, is something to regularly be aware of. I love PHP. I like web stuff overall. Over the last... 30 years of software dev, what I've noticed is that the really useful/good ideas tend to get implemented in various languages if they're useful. The sign of a useful library can often be that there's multiple implementations of it. We saw a productized "web mvc" launch rails, and we then saw a dozen variations in other languages take the essential parts, implement them, and good ideas have flown between various tech camps for years since. There are counterpoints to that. A colleague is doing some work in SciPy, and there doesn't seem to be an equivalent outside python. In PHP, we have FlySystem, and I've not yet seen an equivalent outside PHP. I've seen some attempts, but they tend to have one or two adapters, and that's it. Overall, language diffs are often/mostly personal preferences. Your project or business isn't failing because your language of choice can't connect to a database quickly enough, or that you can't write data to filesystem, or whatever. But if you've spent X years with tech Y, you will likely be faster than learning something new (and learning the idiomatic methods of that new tech). Figuring out when to dig deeper, and when to move on... again - no single choice on that. I may have shared it before, but I saw a company moving new dev away from PHP, and moved to a combination of python and node. "It's so much easier to hire people!" But... they were largely hiring jr and mid level people, and they were doing greenfield redevelopment of some of the PHP stuff. And... they'd attempted a rebuild of the PHP stuff once, but made the same mistake as the first time; primarily one person, working on their own, often offsite, not interacting with other people. Moving to python/node, they hired more/cheaper people, and the rewriting team required everyone to work together. The languages were pointed to as the reason behind some of the early success, but it was far more the processes around the development that provided the success. With enough people, forced to write cleaner code the whole group can understand, as well as requiring tests and documentation... yes, the outcome is going to be better than requiring one person to build a lot of stuff on their own, without providing adequate time for testing, documentation, or collaboration with others. Likely most of us have come across enough bad JS/Python/Perl/PHP/Java/C#/etc to understand the quality of the code is only tangentially related to the language, and far more about the processes and expectations set around the development.

fimdomeio 3y ago

New languages are hopefully made taking into account all the lessons learned from previous mistakes older languages made. Old languages can't change too much or they just become hell to upgrade, so they can't compete with the newer ones. I don't think there's much of a problem with this. But I will still setup a wordpress if I need a quick site.

edsrzf 3y ago

The world that PHP grew up in has changed. The language and community have matured, and in the process PHP has lost most of its competitive advantage: low barrier to entry. It used to be: * Moving from static HTML to dynamic server code was a matter of changing file extension and adding PHP tags. * Many shared hosting services supported PHP. * Deploying was a matter of copying files to the server. Projects that started from HTML + PHP tags grew and became unmaintainable messes. The PHP community learned from this and evolved in a different direction. You can still _write_ PHP code in the old way, but it's strongly discouraged and (rightfully) seen as a bad practice. You don't even use PHP as a templating language anymore. Symfony and Laravel have their own templating languages that dynamically compile to PHP. Modern PHP code looks very much like Java or C# -- classes, OO design patterns, and so on. Except in most ways, it's worse than Java or C#. Why would anyone start a new project in PHP? Deploy models have also changed. You're usually not copying files to servers, but deploying Docker images or other formats. PHP has no particular advantage in this new world. If PHP wants to turn things around, it needs to figure out what makes it unique or better than other languages. Right now, there's really nothing.

asdfman123 3y ago
They’re solving problems for people who are stuck using PHP, not trying to find a market niche.
- acdha 3y ago
  That can work for a while but it doesn’t attract new developers, and it tends to have legacy projects be replaced outright with new ones in better languages.
  - asdfman123 3y ago
    If anyone needs a quick scripting language, there’s JavaScript or Python. There’s no niche that PHP needs to fill except for “a language for people who don’t want to move off of PHP.”
    - 3y ago

leke 3y ago

Meh, at this point it doesn't matter. There's so much (bad) php code out there that needs to be maintained, any person who learns to write good php has a job for life. But I've always said that PHP's popularity was due to its availability on free hosting providers. However nowadays, you can get free hosting for a plethora of languages. So more competition, and also there are so many more languages that are competing for the backend nowadays.

mike503 3y ago

It's because PHP isn't simple anymore. It requires an IDE, it's likely using a framework (at least Laravel seems relatively sanely designed), and everyone wants to make it contain all the features (and most importantly syntaxes) of all their favorite other languages. If you're using an IDE already pretty much any language could be the same.

entropicgravity 3y ago

Mother Mary came to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

archerx 3y ago
I like that PHP is not popular and looked down upon by the masses. There is so much less drama in the communities, there isn't a new resume driven framework made every other week, no one is try to spike extensions with malware, no real build system, so much less bullshit. Its like everyone one who uses PHP is to busy making stuff to be stirring drama online while the PHP core has been steadily getting better for the past few years. It’s super cozy and honestly I don’t want it to get popular again so it can remain drama free and cozy.
- porker 3y ago
  > There is so much less drama in the communities I'd hate to see the other communities then! I think of PHP communities as full of drama, whether that's fads and dogmatism (which usually changes every 3-5 years) or people lacking interpersonal skills and unable to keep conversations civil.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  I used to think like you did, and in my case all of that sort of reasoning was based at some level on fear of success. I settled for writing frumpy code at frumpy companies for years, but my life got better when I tried to chase after things a little more.
asdfman123 3y ago
PHP, PHP, PHP, PHP. Speaking words of wisdom, PHP.
- owenpalmer 3y ago
  Yes

pauljurczak 3y ago

Let it die...

fndex 3y ago

Please do nothing. Just let it die as it should have had already.

archerx 3y ago
Give me one good reason why PHP should die. Hard mode don’t regurgitate the cargo cultish dogmas.

cozzyd 3y ago

Its appeal is becoming more selective.

jhoelzel 3y ago

Having converted a couple of PHP projects to modern languages and maintained way more than i care to admit: Its not going anywhere. Or at least in europe its not. Symfony et al have matured enough so they are usuable for allmost everything web related and if you dont plan to be the next google homepage, it will carry you VERY far. Is it pretty? No. Is it efficient? No. But you will be able to find 10 coders for the price of 4, that will have your project iterate until you need something bigger and better. If you do not hate your staff, by then they can easily pick up golang and convert into microservices, taking it down piece by piece and making the parts more efficient that need it.

pjmlp 3y ago
I can confirm, most European ISP keep only offering PHP and Perl on their cheapest hosting price plans, PHP is here to stay.
pankajdoharey 3y ago
There is no structure, OO was an after thought, meta-programming an after thought., unit testing, testing utilities and frameworks an afterthought, their best Web-framework Laravel is a clone of Rails, No original good ideas in the PHP Community and thats the problem. The reason is PHP is a poor clone of Perl.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  I was with you until the end. Originally doesn’t mean shit. Who cares if Laravel is a Rails clone? For the record, I have no idea if it is, let alone if it is beyond the degree that plenty of other things are “Rails clones”. And this is ignoring the fact that Rails had been inspired plenty by other projects throughout its lifetime, as it should. I’m interested in using the right tool for the job, not getting caught up in weird inside baseball attribution wars. IMO, PHP is often not the best tool because it’s a shitty language. If it has a “Rails clone”, that makes it better, not worse.
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butz 3y ago

PHP CMSs are not as relevant today, as they were years before. Nowadays you can quickly generate a static website using Hugo or 11ty and host it on Netlify or Cloudflare Pages for free.

sourcecodeplz 3y ago
Dynamic is what you build with PHP.

jt2190 3y ago

I’m a long-time JavaScripter, and after years of working with Java backends and also some time with NodeJS/Express I’ve been working with a PHP backend at my current gig. A few observations: * PHP documentation sucks. It’s demonstrably incomplete in important cases, and I guess to make up for it they allow anyone with a browser to add comments and examples, many which are distracting and very poor quality. Furthermore, things that start mattering at scale, like memory management, database connection configuration, etc. seem to be solved but completely undocumented. * As a result the internet is littered with millions of additional “happy path” examples, many of which are outdated as well. * PHP doesn’t have a big corporate sponsor who is putting serious resources towards improving documentation, tooling and other resources. I would love for Facebook or Etsy or someone who’s gotten a lot of milage out of PHP to take the lead here. * PHP is European/Israeli led (in the sense that many core devs seem to be there), and a lot of materials don’t seem to cross the pond. (Maybe we Americans put more value in hype and marketing… I don’t know.) * PHP has warts, which “senior” devs nit-pick mercilessly, yet it really isn’t any worse than JavaScript in that regard. (For some TypeScript-hidden runtime bugs are culturally allowed to be ignored, because TypeScript is cool. JavaScript/Node forces you to use an event loop whether that makes sense or not. Etc.) * Again, without a large, corporate backer, anyone thinking about “career” worries about getting a job, because there are not large corporate backers. (See how this works?) The whole situation reminds me of where JavaScript was around 2010: Things have gotten seriously better but the wider-world had not caught on yet. PHP has some very impressive engineering and has proven itself again and again as a solid option, that is, it’s not perfect but it’s good enough. Where it ends up is hard to say: Maybe it’ll end up like BSD Unix, with ardent fans but not the most popular kid.

rafark 3y ago
Actually I think php docs are one of the best in class, the api at least. Try python, very little (and cluttered) official docs.

jacooper 3y ago

I'm not a developer, but my experience with php web apps hasn't been great. They always feel janky and slow, wordpress nextcloud and so on. That's why owncloud created a go version.

EcUnekca 3y ago

Just let it die. I would happily move to different languages

treadmill 3y ago

Accelerate it any way imaginable.

phendrenad2 3y ago

I sympathize with people who built a career on PHP, but the time to move on has long since passed. PHP should, in my opinion, go into maintenance mode. It's just too far out of sync with how software development is done these days. I still like using it for personal projects, so selfishly, I hope they don't try to modernize it too much and ruin the simplicity.