PHP is probably the best language for server side webdev today. Still insanely easy to deploy, lots of features at the language level, and the frameworks that are available are very sophisticated. Whether you like Laravel or not, it’s influence is spreading to other frameworks within PHP and other languages. Also, Laravel has some of the best docs in OSS, period.

I think WordPress is pushing other projects forward as well. The tech stack over there doesn’t move nearly as fast, but the UX is still pretty good out of the box and with the enterprise clients I work with on a daily basis, they all still love WP.

Back to PHP proper for a minute, the language is fast. There are efforts being made to run PHP on Serverless infrastructure or with continuous process environments. New features are added to the language on a regular basis as evidenced by this post and others. The defacto package manager, Composer, is also world class.

It’s a good time to be a PHP dev!

As a final point, I’ll throw out some of my worries. I’ve been writing PHP since 2010~ as a high schooler fooling around.

The “Java-fication” of PHP is real. There is a push for more types and type related features. These aren’t bad in isolation, but as they move deeper into the core of the language, there is a risk of breaking legacy apps. Historically, backwards compatibility has been excellent and allows older apps to upgrade PHP versions and take advantage of performance improvements without a rewrite. I’m not advocating keeping 100% compatibility forever, but recent versions have played more fast and loose with breaking changes. We’ve done a decent job of carrying the entire community onto new versions and that will be important for continued adoption.

Take a look at the open RFCs for more details. I think there is value for pulling good ideas from other languages, but we don’t need every idea from every language.

Here’s to another 20 years of PHP!