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I'm curious, is there any particular aspect of PHP that helps you build things faster than you might be able to with other languages or frameworks?

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It’s like Java but you can actually use it.

It has no compile time, the development cycle is crazy fast, the stdlib is good for the web, every problem is solved so they’re all googleable, it has a good package manager now, great frameworks, good testing stuff, there’s a lot of positives atm

Concurrency is one thing not good for PHP. If a background task needs a lot of parallel work, I'd use node in that part.

I agree with you. As a counterpoint though, I worked somewhere that generated some of the heaviest and biggest reports of anywhere I’ve ever seen with a lot of concurrency and PHP handled the task fine. Node would have still been a better fit though :)

There are multiple reasons, but one I like most is how easy it is to deploy.

And because you don't need build tools you can deploy it as easily years later.

Also while developing you can just hit F5 or rerun a PHP script in your console compared to waiting for a build.

Yep, this is key. I do a ton of Java programming in my day job, but PHP for freelance work. The simplicity of deployment and rapid dev cycles with PHP is great.

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