Is PHP dead? What is the job outlook and future of PHP in the next five years?

1. Is PHP dead? What is the job outlook and future of PHP in the next fiveyears? PHP is far from dead. Since we get similar questions all the time, I am just going to repeat an answer from another discussion. Is PHP still relevant as of 2019? COBOL, a 1959 dinosaur language deployed on few tens of thousands installations is still relevant in 2019. PHP is actively developed on 2019 and deployed on several hundreds of millions installations. Therefore even justthe “still widely used in many web apps” is plenty enough to justify learning it. Plus, PHP is so easy to learn and used everywhere that not knowing it is: • • a bad reference on your curriculum, like not knowing any shell or bash command. Sure, you can ignore those but it shows the moment you are assigned some simple tasks. Your boss will know. Your colleagues will know. Is PHP good for anything?

2. PHP, especially after version 7.0, is fast, simple, very syntax rich. It comes with embedded security libraries while being the cheapest language available on every host provider. PHP runs on multiple CPU cores (Node.js needs additional work) and can be used both as sync and async (like Node.js) with an additional script. PHP implements type hinting, interfaces, facades, traits, singletons, closures, structured exceptions, generic containers, iterators, namespaces, packages (Composer, akin to npm), unit tests, continuous integration… It comes with thousands of packaged (and stand-alone) libraries, MVC / REST frameworks. Some, in example Laravel, are an industry standard. And all of this can be learned one bit at a time, because basic PHP is as simple as writing “print(“Hello world”);”. Even a child can learn PHP. As such, you can find cheap PHP developers everywhere in the world, not just in California. Sure, with immense quantity, comes a immense range of quality. Therefore it’s plenty possible to find a bad PHP coder or an excellent coder. Companies may help themselves with the help of online PHP perspective developers check/interview tools. Is PHP still growing? PHP powers the hugest majority of the websites in the world. By far. This is thanks to some “giant” applications like WordPress or very large “users” (Facebook and many others). When not used as async, event driven model, base PHP faces upper limits on the amount of concurrent website hits that are below Node.js, Go and Scala. Not using PHP as async, event driven model allows to quickly and easily create complex applications that are still more than fast enough to be used by large enterprises. When used with async model, its speed grows as shown in the chart below (created on old PHP 5.x, that ran at half speed vs what PHP 7.x runs today):

3. These hits were achieved by using Symfony, a very feature rich but very slow framework. By using one of many PHP API backend optimized frameworks (Lithium, Lumen, Fat Free Framework…) speed more than doubles. Here is a more recent chart, featuring PHP 7.0 performance by switching model:

5. PHP 7.2 is about 5% faster than PHP 7.0 featured on the chart. Since achieving enterprise grade, ultra-massive throughput (a la YouTube-Netflix-Amazon scale) involves a whole re-thinking of data centers, servers, services stacks and so on, the embedded costs of using async PHP or another solution become just “one of many balance voices” in the whole project. In case the above is still not enough, Facebook developed both a PHP compiler and a PHP virtual machine (HHVM) to further improve performance. Facebook is perhaps the most known PHP “business card”, it’s the living proof of a modern and ever evolving, ultra-massive website that runs the PHP language. Conclusion I hope by reading the post above you understand why PHP is here to stay and be relevant for many years to come: • • • • • • • Easy to learn Very rich, both on syntax features and constructs Easy to find everywhere, on any hosting, with no additional costs Huge amount of third party libraries, packages, tutorials, books Cheapest costs of all Cheapest, easiest to find developers for your company Even in default configuration, more than adequate for all but the most demanding heavy usage. With additional effort, able to scale up to Facebook levels. Some Resources of PHP: PHP For Dynamic Websites Introduction to PHP In Arabic Learn SASS and SCSS PHP Specialist (2017 Edition) PHP: Import CSV File to MySQL Learn Complete PHP & MYSQL Programming From Scratch PHP and MYSQL Course from Scratch with Projects Learn Step by Step Codeigniter 3 with Bootstrap 4 From Scratch with Advance Learn Complete PHP MySQL by Building 5 Projects from Scratch PHP PDO – Create a Personal Contacts Agenda Project Learning PHP Data Objects PDO PHP Secure Login and Registration System + Email Activation Crear Documentos Pdf, Word, Excel en Php Generar Reportes