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 cu

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 * As a result the internet is littered with millions of additional “happy path” examples, many of which are outdated as well.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.