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Comment by kwesidev | Hacker News Reader

php is dead

And yet there's a modern (looking) library that seems to make using state of the art technology painless.

Mind sharing your definition of "dead"? It's not a part of the tech stack I work with currently, but that's not what we mean by dead, right? :)

Genuine question: Is anybody picking up PHP off the shelf for starting applications today, or its relevance mostly in existing applications like Facebook (which I've read is powered by PHP).

I have an old friend who’s been working with PHP for almost two decades. We’ve teased him a lot over the years “because PHP”, but the truth is that in 2019 PHP is actually rather relevant. Everything is becoming a web-app, even major enterprise solutions are turning into some sort of web-api and a MVVM JavaScript front, and PHP is actually rather suited for this. It’s fast, relatively safe and reliable and you won’t have trouble hiring for it.

I think one of the reasons you don’t hear too much about it is the same reason you don’t see a lot of JAVA or C# articles on HN, it’s old. If I look at my local jobmarket for development though, those three languages make up around 90% of the current open positions.

>it's old

Same age as JavaScript and Python is 5 years older still. I hear a lot more about these 2 languages. There must be more to it than simply age.

Isn’t JavaScript a similar story within its ecosystem? A lot of the new flashy things get a lot of attention, but all the jobs are for Angular. It’s very anecdotal of course, and react does have some traction, but it’s almost all Angular.

I’ll agree with python, but around here python jobs require (and prioritise) some sort of university degree in math or statistics. There are a lot of python jobs, just not for software developers.

If you move near Copenhagen it’s much nuanced. You might even be able to find a job writing Rust there, but where I live, chances are there won’t be a single Rust job in my lifetime.

There are plenty of React jobs out there (US West Coast). Some people are spooked by the Angular v1 vs v2+ debacle, but there are Angular jobs too.

Yes, it's remarkable how once you move outside the tech hubs there's only PHP, Java and C#. I've observed that PHP survives in smaller locations where there isn't even any Java or C#. It's ubiquity is quite depressing.

Just look at the awesome selfhosted list and you will see that php still dominates.

In my city, php is still in the top 3, too.

Yes, PHP is still widely used for new development.

I know a couple of devs who still work with PHP but it's certainly not as popular as it was 10 years ago.

Started using it (Laravel) for a new project recently, looks pretty handy so far (lots of forms and validation).

My favorite forms solution (for SPAs) is https://github.com/final-form/final-form (there are adapters for React and Vue). The author has also written a previous form management tool called Redux Forms. Between the two versions (both are very good), you could tell the API evolution that the author had deep knowledge of the space, and the solution is pretty elegant.

It's certainly common in higher ed (my state's university system uses a lot of Drupal).

Lots of companies and people are.

Now the real question is, is anybody using it for new projects outside low cost outsourcing sweatshops and codeslave farms in 3rd world countries. Not really. Even mentioning PHP in an interview for a successful modern tech company will most likely lead to instant rejection.

And please by all means do dv me to oblivion. I'm sorry but someone had to say "emperor has no clothes".

Plenty places in the US or EU work and continue to start projects in PHP, and I doubt very many sucessful places are going to be as stupid as rejecting candidates over PHP. (Sure, if they're not using it they might not hire someone with just PHP experience, but that's true of many stacks).

Any evidence for your claims?

Source for that instant rejection statement?

PHP-FIG brought PHP back to life from my point of view.

and also the Laravel framework

Laravel is a layer of singletons on top of Symfony components, I think it should not be credited for PHP renaissance.

Larsvel may be built on the shoulders of symfony but it achieved to build a great ecosystem dragging in new people. So he is right.

it managed to attract a lot of people that used to use wordpress or some spaghetti code, helping giving the idea PHP is not a good fit for enterprise-grade software.

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