How many times have I read this? Too many. But PHP is still here, after 30 hours. In 2025 the 8.4 version was released, and most of the www was built in PHP language. So, this will be the php-is-going-to-end 10.0.
I really love coding in PHP. I learnt it before JavaScript, and it saved my life many times. Every time I need to make a quick API, CMS, or E-commerce I used to develop it in PHP. I worked with many of its flavors: Laravel, Codeigniter, and -of course- WordPress. I had a huge success, and I am very glad about it. However, this year I decided to quit!
I’m really sad, because I have worked with PHP for more than 10 years. It’s like a friend, and we had to leave it behind.
The issue was that since a few years ago, I started having troubles to find juniors developers who knew PHP. Educator aren’t including the language in its topics. The results, new developers were coming with MERN stack. For us, it was a huge problem. We had many projects developed in PHP and I need to make sure someone could support them.
We have many projects running. So, we need to develop an API in NodeJS, and two frontends in ReactJS. I know there are other options, but we took advantage of the refactor and we did it well for once. We need to develop two Frontend (public and private) because the public had a specific design the client approved, and this was harder to develop. While the look and feel of the admin is not important. We used tailwind or we bought a template depending on the case. The decided to make an API was to be fetched from the admin and public together.
All the process had to be transparent, so a regression test was very important. But we also needed to test all the functionalities again. That took a long time as well.
It was such a debate and a hard decision to make. But we needed to convert the most projects into NodeJS we could, before it was late. And it was a teamwork. Designers looking for old Photoshop files, account team talking with clients, technical leaders making planning, and QA working on test cases. The whole process took more than 2 years, but it is almost finished by now.
It’s funny that new technologies couldn’t kill PHP, but now, finally, maybe it’s happening.
Top comments (2)
Do you really want people that only know one stack?
Are there still people using Express in the Node world?
I think when schools teach tech stacks instead of general IT knowledge there is a problem with the schooling. Higher education is not a bootcamp.
I'm an autodidact and PHP is my comfort language. But I have done projects in Python, Java, C# and Javascript. Patterns don't care about a language, the only thing you have to be aware of are language quirks.
I bet the clients were not happy when they heard that. Who wants to pay to do a refactor to another language? Moving to another framework is already an hard sell.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to learn juniors PHP? That should not take two years.
If juniors already are bound to a stack what will their progress be in the future?
I think it is a story that tells more about you than about PHP.
I think your post reflects a very honest personal experience, and it’s true that finding junior PHP developers has become harder in recent years. Still, every year we hear the same statement about “PHP is ending,” and yet it continues to power a large share of the web and keeps evolving. So while your team’s move to Node and React makes sense for your context, I’d see this more as a team decision than proof that PHP is truly dying.