Why PHP?

Rediscovering the Strengths of PHP: Unveiling the Modern Ecosystem

In the contemporary web development landscape, PHP's enduring relevance and vibrancy often find themselves overshadowed by misconceptions rooted in outdated perceptions. Too often, I engage in conversations about why choosing PHP remains a wise decision in today's diverse technological landscape. Unfortunately, PHP often carries the weight of judgments and biases based on limited or outdated knowledge—misguided opinions that fail to acknowledge the significant strides the language has made over the past decade.

As an advocate for PHP, I am compelled to shed light on the transformative evolution that has taken place, addressing the gap between common misconceptions and the current robust PHP ecosystem. Criticisms often harken back to a PHP of yesteryears, blissfully unaware of the language's present-day strengths and the thriving community that propels it forward.

In this article, we embark on a journey to explore the contemporary benefits and strengths that make PHP an exceptional choice in the modern development landscape. We aim to dispel outdated notions, providing a comprehensive overview of the advantages that position PHP as a powerful, flexible, and reliable solution for today's dynamic web development needs. Let's redefine PHP beyond its historical context, embracing its present-day prowess and the wealth of tools and frameworks that make it a compelling force in the world of programming.

Ease of Learning and Use

PHP stands out for its user-friendly design, making it exceptionally easy for beginners to learn and for experienced developers to work with efficiently. The language boasts a straightforward syntax that simplifies the learning curve for those familiar with web development basics. Its accessibility extends to a wealth of online resources, tutorials, and a vibrant community, providing ample support for learners.

Moreover, PHP's versatility and simplicity contribute to its ease of use in building dynamic websites.
The language also features automatic memory management, reducing the burden on developers and enhancing overall code readability.

The practicality of PHP extends beyond its learning phase; its intuitive nature and extensive documentation empower developers to create dynamic and interactive web applications quickly and efficiently. As a result, PHP remains an accessible and powerful tool for developers across various skill levels.

Wide Adoption

PHP has seen widespread adoption in web development, emerging as a pivotal language for crafting dynamic and interactive websites.
Renowned for its simplicity and versatility, PHP facilitates the seamless integration of server-side scripting into HTML, enabling developers to build feature-rich and scalable web applications. Its extensive support for various databases and frameworks, such as Laravel and Symfony, underscores PHP's significance in powering a significant portion of the internet. As a testament to its enduring popularity, PHP continues to be a preferred choice for developers seeking efficiency and effectiveness in crafting robust online experiences.
If you want to explore more statistics, you can take a look at the W3Tech website that collects the usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites: https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language
PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages, widely adopted in the industry.
This means many resources, communities, and libraries are available to help developers.

Extensive Standard Library

PHP boasts an extensive standard library that significantly contributes to its versatility and efficiency in web development. This comprehensive collection of pre-built modules and functions simplifies everyday tasks, enabling developers to accomplish various operations without requiring extensive custom code.

The standard library in PHP covers a broad spectrum of functionalities, ranging from file handling and database interactions to network communication and data manipulation. This rich set of built-in tools accelerates development and ensures a consistent and reliable foundation for building web applications.

The availability of a robust standard library means that developers can leverage pre-existing modules to streamline their coding process, reducing the time and effort required for routine tasks. This enhances productivity and promotes best practices by providing standardized solutions to common challenges.

PHP offers native support for many databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.
Simplified integration with databases facilitates the development of dynamic and interactive web applications.

Ultimately, the extensive standard library of PHP is a key strength, empowering developers to create feature-rich and robust web applications efficiently and confidently.

If you want to explore more about the PHP language reference: https://www.php.net/manual/en/langref.php

Open Source Resources

PHP's open-source nature is a cornerstone of its success, fostering a collaborative and thriving ecosystem for web development. As an open-source language, PHP provides developers unrestricted access to its source code, encouraging transparency, community-driven innovation, and widespread adoption.

The open-source ethos of PHP has given rise to a vast community of developers who actively contribute to its enhancement and evolution. This collaborative effort ensures that PHP remains up-to-date, secure, and adaptable to the ever-changing web development needs.

One of the notable benefits of PHP's open-source nature is the availability of an extensive repository of libraries like https://packagist.org/explore/ , frameworks, and tools that developers can freely access and integrate into their projects. This wealth of resources expedites development and promotes best practices and code reusability.

Furthermore, the open-source model encourages knowledge-sharing and support within the PHP community. Online forums, documentation, and collaborative platforms enable developers to seek assistance, share insights, and collectively address challenges, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

PHP's open-source foundation empowers developers with flexibility, innovation, and a supportive community, making it a dynamic and enduring choice for web development.

PHP Standards Recommendations

PHP Standards Recommendations (PSRs) are guidelines and recommendations established by the PHP community to enhance interoperability and collaboration among developers. These standards provide a common ground for structuring code, defining interfaces, and organizing projects, ensuring a consistent and cohesive approach to PHP development. Adhering to PSR facilitates code sharing, eases collaboration between different projects, and contributes to PHP-based applications' overall stability and maintainability.
Explore more about PHP Standards Recommendations: https://www.php-fig.org/psr/

Active Community

PHP has a vibrant, active, and large community that plays a pivotal role in the language's continuous evolution and widespread success. This dynamic community, comprised of developers, contributors, and enthusiasts, actively engages in forums, online discussions, and collaborative projects. The sense of knowledge-sharing within the PHP community fosters support and encourages best practices. It ensures a wealth of resources for developers, making PHP a resilient and adaptive language at the forefront of web development.

Wide Choice of Frameworks

The PHP ecosystem offers a diverse array of frameworks, providing developers with a wide choice to tailor their approach to web development. Popular frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony offer structured methodologies, pre-built modules, and robust features, enabling developers to expedite project development while maintaining scalability and maintainability.
This broad selection empowers developers to choose frameworks that align with their specific project requirements, fostering efficiency and innovation within the PHP development landscape.

Execution Speed

The PHP ecosystem is continually evolving to address performance concerns, and tools like Swoole, Openswoole, and RoadRunner exemplify the community's commitment to enhancing execution speed. Traditionally known for its interpreted nature, PHP has significantly improved in recent years. Swoole, an asynchronous and coroutine-based extension, enables developers to boost PHP's execution speed by allowing concurrent, non-blocking operations. Openswoole builds on this foundation, offering additional features and optimizations for performance-critical applications.

Moreover, RoadRunner, a high-performance PHP application server, enhances execution speed by efficiently handling HTTP requests and managing worker processes. Collectively, these tools contribute to a more responsive and scalable PHP ecosystem, bridging the gap between traditional PHP development and the demands of modern, high-performance applications. As developers increasingly prioritize speed and efficiency, these tools play a crucial role in elevating the performance capabilities of PHP in various use cases.

Regular Updates

The PHP ecosystem is characterized by a commitment to regular updates, ensuring the language remains contemporary and secure. With a robust release cycle, PHP consistently introduces new features, optimizations, and security enhancements. This dedication to staying current facilitates the adoption of modern coding practices. It underscores the community's vigilance in addressing evolving challenges, making PHP a resilient and forward-looking language for web development.
Behind the scenes is the PHP Foundation, a collective of people and organizations whose mission is to ensure the prosperity of the PHP language.
To explore more about the PHP Foundation, https://opencollective.com/phpfoundation

Extensive API Support

PHP has extensive API support, offering developers a robust foundation for seamless integration with various services and technologies. Whether interacting with databases, third-party applications, or web services, PHP's versatile ecosystem and well-documented APIs empower developers to create interconnected and feature-rich web applications. This extensive API support enhances PHP's versatility and simplifies the development process, enabling developers to harness the power of external services and libraries effortlessly. One example is the OpenAI PHP which is a supercharged community-maintained PHP API client that allows you to interact with OpenAI API. Explore more here: https://github.com/openai-php/client

In addition to its inherent support for various APIs, PHP benefits from the PHP-FIG's PSR (PHP Standards Recommendations) standards, which include guidelines like PSR-7 for HTTP message interfaces and PSR-15 for HTTP middleware. Adhering to these standards ensures a consistent and interoperable approach to API development, making it easier for developers to integrate and collaborate across different projects. The PSR standards, alongside PHP's native flexibility, further solidify PHP's position as a versatile language with extensive API support, fostering a unified and standardized approach to web development.

Quality of the delivery

The PHP ecosystem places a strong emphasis on the quality of software delivery, employing a range of robust tools for quality assurance. PHPUnit, PESTPHP, and PHPStan are integral components of this commitment, providing developers with comprehensive testing, behavior-driven development, and static analysis capabilities. Additionally, tools like RectorPHP contribute to automated code refactoring, enhancing code maintainability. By integrating these tools into the development workflow, the PHP ecosystem ensures a high standard of code quality, fostering reliability and sustainability in the delivery of software projects.

In summary...

In summary, PHP's journey from its historical context to the modern development landscape reveals a dynamic and resilient language, constantly evolving to meet the demands of today's web development. From its ease of learning and use, wide adoption in the industry, and extensive standard library to the open-source ethos, PHP Standards Recommendations (PSRs), and an active community, PHP stands as a versatile powerhouse. The commitment to execution speed with tools like Swoole and RoadRunner, coupled with a focus on quality assurance through PHPUnit and PHPStan, underscores PHP's dedication to performance and reliability.

As we navigate through PHP's extensive API support and a wide choice of frameworks, it becomes evident that PHP is not just a language but a comprehensive ecosystem. Its regular updates and the PHP Foundation's ongoing efforts ensure that PHP remains contemporary, secure, and at the forefront of technological advancements.

In this ever-evolving landscape, PHP invites developers to explore its vibrant ecosystem, debunking outdated myths and embracing the language's present-day prowess. As we celebrate PHP's strengths and versatility, it becomes clear that choosing PHP is not just a nod to tradition but a strategic decision for anyone venturing into the dynamic realm of web development.

Relevant resources

The PHP community is so vibrant that some lovely people created excellent content to explain why and how PHP is so relevant nowadays.

Video: Why PHP? by Brent

Video: Why you should use PHP? Changes in the last decade by Brent

Video: PHP doesn't suck (anymore) by Aaron Francis

Video: PHP is the future (a video celebrating the Laravel ecosystem) by Aaron Francis

Comments

[Bobby Iliev]

Nice!

[Roberto B.]

Thank you @bobbyiliev ! If you have any feedback, feel free to share ✨

[Mateusz Charytoniuk]

Totally agree. PHP is a mature language with a rich ecosystem. If the community embraces async extensions and long-running processes I think it will have a bright future.

Unfortunately I think it suffers from a lot of false misconceptions. I wrote about that here. Can you let me know what you think? dev.to/mcharytoniuk/programming-co...

[Sanjay Ojha]

Nice update for those who still think PHP 5 is the way of making PHP app. I agree after PHP 7, PSR, Composer, and framework like Symfony and Laravel things have improved a lot.
But still use right tool for right job, Python is still better choice for data science, ML, scrapping, bots etc. I will chose PHP over anything else for web application. Node and any JavaScript frontend library to make app that requires high concurrency and modern Web APIs.

[Roberto B.]

Thank you for your comment. Totally agree to use the right tool for the right job. I'm a fan of PHP for web development, but depending on the context, I love using Go, Rust, Python, or Javascript (the choice depends on the type of the project). I am not ashamed to admit that in the past, when I was young, I also used Cobol and Visual Basic 🤣 .

[Jordan Tyler Burchett]

PHP will always be my favorite language, there's just so much you can do without using so many external libraries

[Scott Reno]

Great post!

[Otvos Laszlo Gabriel]

Cool article ! I’ve enjoyed reading! No doubt that I will be doing more php work in the future.

[Cesar Devesa]

We're in this together.

[Tanzim Ibthesam]

Lovely article keep it up

[Eckehard]

I often struggle to write and debug PHP code, but sometimes it's the only simple option to access a database or to find files on the server. Are there any standard libraries or example repositories you could recommend to make my life easier?

[Roberto B.]

one great and free resouce is phptherightway.com/

another (paid) resource is front-line-php.com/

[Eckehard]

Great, Exactly what I need!

[Kevin Naidoo]

Interesting. I would use BASH for that. If you using MySQL:

# Run any SQL
mysql -uWhateverUserName -p the_db -e "SELECT * FROM users"

# Find files
find /whatever/path  -type f -name "*.py"

If you want to find files using PHP

<?php

$files = glob('/any/path/*.py');
foreach($files as $f) {
  print $f . PHP_EOL;
}

For Database access:

<?php

$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=127.0.0.1;port=3306;dbname=mydb;charset=utf8', 'myuser', 'password');

$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users where id = ?");
$stmt->execute([1]);

# This is not efficient for large datasets, you should fetch in batches
$users = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

[Eckehard]

Thanks a lot. Usually I find a working solution. But I´m unsure if my solution is good.

What about safety, how to deal with passwords etc... So I would like to use some code written by professionals, that do a better job than me.

[Kevin Naidoo]

For passwords - most BASH utilities accept a "-p" or something similar option that prompts you for a password instead of your entering in the terminal. use "man command" to get the possible flags.

Environment variables can be used for storing passwords, then in your scripts - you reference the env variable instead of the actual password. Environment variables can be accessed by anyone on the machine so there's an element of risk here.

For maximum security, you would create a system user who cannot ssh, so you ssh via one user using a hardware key and then switch users. The passwords are then stored in that user's profile - so cannot be accessed from anywhere on the machine. But this might be overkill.

As for where to find professional code, look on github.com, lots of open-source projects - I would look for reputable projects e.g. Django, Laravel, Microsoft, etc... all depends on the specific code you need.

[Kevin Naidoo]

Great stuff! , as a big fan of PHP myself, this is a really good article. PHP 7+ is a whole new language, modern, and productive, with types and a ton of features but people still think of PHP from 10 years ago.

[Mohit Bansal]

Thank you for this post
But as I see more jobs towards (Js, python)
please see as a fresher
if I learn about larval how can I see my future (asking only)

[Tanzim Ibthesam]

If your area has more jobs on any tech stack go for that no problem. Laravel is great any tool is great if you can master the core language and database and underlying concepts beside it.

[Mohit Bansal]

You are right but I need an opinion
I mean to say that if I learn larval (I have to learn it anyway)or master it
There could be jobs for larval developers (In startups)

[Tanzim Ibthesam]

Startups !== Small IT Business. Just look forward to the jobs in startups its not possible to know which startup uses which tech stacks.
If you have to learn just go for it. Try to understand core php and put a lot of effort in Databases specially sql. I believe you should do well. But with Laravel there are lots of Freelancing and remote job opportunities if you are well skilled.Best of luck in whatever path you select.

[Mohit Bansal]

yes I enhancing myself in SQL and PHP Can you share some good resources
how can I find growth-oriented jobs for this tech stack (less than one 1 year experience )

[MexiKode ⚙]

PHP is great, just remember: libraries == Good, frameworks == Evil

[Ryugen 京]

like this

[OM JADHAV]

The structure of PHP 🐘is worse like in java and c# we use split() but here u have to use explode()💥 still 70% web pages are using PHP🙂