I am genuinely interested why anyone would start a new project in PHP currently. What are the reasons?
Many of the quirks and problematic parts have been addressed through the years, it's battle tested, and there is a healthy and stable ecosystem behind. It doesn't need to be everyone's first choice, but there's also no strong reason to avoid using it in its current state.
It has a low barrier to entry and great language features - static typing being one of the big ones. It has become a really nice language over the years, great to work in and in no way less satisfying or effective than for example golang.
And, of course, laravel exists.
... and it's completely optional in many cases on top of that. Even if you're using third party libraries, it will only crash if you mess up your types at the library's interface.
I would have thought PHP would scale very well. It may not be high performance, but its start each request-response cycle from scratch should scale horizontally very well, surely?
That said, with today's PHP it is possible to optimize the hot path pretty well with stuff like FFI.
And it's still performant enough https://x.com/arvidkahl/status/1775261978006896730
https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/expressions/match-expr.h...
(They had hundreds of millions of profit)
- Type annotations are integrated and work well with PHP now. This results in a kind of scripty Java OOP that is more succinct and type checked ! (it is possible to write PHP without types when you want metaprogramming features also)
- Many inconsistencies in the design of the language (OOP, function naming etc.) have been resolved/smoothed out
- The language recognises the inherent problems with `null` and allows you to make type annotations that rule out null. This is my smell test for a language BTW -- golang for instance does not seem to have a good story for null.
- PHP Language developers have been really good about increasing performance year after year
- Lots of software like web frameworks and CMSes continue to be based on PHP
And -- the greatest part of the design -- PHP remains the best example of the "shared nothing" architecture. An architecture that allows you to scale your application easily.
I am pretty much in the "your dad" category here. Where best to start learning how PHP has changed since I used it?
There are things that appeal to be about PHP.
That said, you can still shoot yourself in the foot with PHP. The dark alleys are all still there.
I looked at Symfony a few years back and it looked nice. if it has kept up with modern PHP it looks like a nice choice.
The reason is simple: It's to me the most efficient, best performant SSR option out there, if your requirements are simple.
You will be amazed at the website's speed. We are so used to the lethargic JS slop of the average website out there these days.
I love PHP, I believe future "vibe coders" will be left bedazzled at its powers, which will be beyond their comprehension.
For example, imagine someone who had never really thought about routing in a definitions file versus file based versus annotations. Three valid use cases that might not exist if if you have a background in something like hardware or if you come from a non-programming discipline.
If you do have that experience, you can rebuild almost any affordance in PHP at this point and it purely comes down to personal preference and how you like to write and design with code.