Started in the year 1995, it was the most popular among web developers. As it controlled all the server-side activities and made the developers’ life somewhat easy. Though in recent years there has been some dip in the use of PHP. But you must have heard this old saying: ” Old is Gold”. Same is the situation with this language, there are so many websites that are completely reliant on this language.
So, Is PHP a dying language?
The answer is definitely NO. It cannot die as it is supported by many CMS such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc. The most used social media websites such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter etc are all dependent on it. Not only this more than 75% of other websites are PHP based.
Is the question is just arising in the mischievous minds of developers because today everything is moving to client side languages such as JavaScript, React, NodeJS, etc? Just because a single language lets us say Node.js is becoming popular for the time being does not indicate that it will replace this or any other language. Both have their own uniqueness.
There is no need to be skeptical about the fact that it today may get dominated by Python or JavaScript, but PHP developer vacancies are still there.
Since it’s not dying, let us see,
What are the Benefits of PHP that are Not Letting it Die:-
1. Maturity
It is an old language. With time most of its bugs have been diminished with the release of new versions. You can see how amazing are the New Features of PHP 7 are. They will definitely drag your mind to learn the language.
2. Omnipresent
It is present everywhere. It is platform independent which makes it more convenient to learn. As the developer does not need to set up a special environment for using it on any platform.
You won’t believe but yes, it works even with LINUX. Here the instructions are given using the command line.
3. Update Effortlessly
Websites that are based on this language are very easy to update. Moreover, it is a server-side language and has nothing to do with client-side, so it is safe as well. Along with this, no browser settings are hindered with its updation.
4. A Good Deal of Libraries
As we all know mostly everyone is using websites in abundance. To deal with different functionalities there are numerous libraries. They provide a kick and life to websites. To make the developers life easy OOP i.e. Object Oriented Programming offers standard libraries. They can be easily found at Composer as well as Github.
Here are few libraries that you must know :
- Dispatch
- Klein
- ImageWorkshop
- Snappy
- Idiorm
- Buzz
- Carbon
- Ubench
- Validation
- Upload
and many more are there.
How will these libraries help you?
Here are the tasks you can easily perform with the use of libraries :
- Helps in providing user-friendly as well as cleaner and simpler API
- Displaying error along with syntax highlighting
- Read-to-use functions which can work with different web services
- Multiple caching techniques are supported
- Debugging of PHP codes
- Error handling
5. Abundant Documentation
Since it is one of the most popular server side scripting language, so you will find its documentation on various sites. This fact makes it easier for the developers to solve any query.
Now, many CMS which run with the help of PHP such as WordPress use the customisation. During this time documentation comes for help to developers.
Here are the things that you will basically get in a documentation :
- Inline comments
- Different functions and various class methods
- Various file headers
- Explanation of classes with their properties
- Description of hooks which includes filters and actions
6. Ample professionals
There is a huge team of professionals who are there to assist you. They are always there for the support. This feature provides swift help by the community of professional to the site admin who is experiencing any kind of technical issue.
7. PHP frameworks
Frameworks provides the streaming of basic structure for the development of websites. This available structure helps speeding up the development process. These framework based websites are responsive and applications that are build using these give better performance.
For your support, here are the names popular PHP frameworks of 2019:
- Laravel
- CodeIgniter
- Symfony
- CakePHP
- Zend
and many more are there.
8. It’s the Language behind the best CMS
If we only talk about the CMS usage point of this language you can say its not going anywhere after all its hand behind WordPress. In recent years WordPress has gained a lot of popularity due to easily manageable SEO and maintenance. This also directly impacts the usage rate of PHP. Not just WordPress PHP is also behind Drupal and Magento. Needless to say PHP is not as not as bad you would think.
9. Easy To Learn
PHP was been developed in a way so that anyone can learn it. It’s comparatively easier to learn than other languages and has a lot of documentation available on the web. Reusable components can be created which can be integrated to any related parts. You’ll start building dynamic web pages within a few days of learning the language.
10. PHP has largest user community
Any language that is as old as PHP ought to have a big user base. With the release of every update PHP is just getting better and better like the release version which added the OOPs concept to it.
11. Latest Market Report
According to W3 Techs PHP is the most used server side programming language as of March 15 2021.
Php Version 7.0 is also the most popular version being used by these sites
So, with no doubt, PHP finds some or other way to attract the developers and not letting it die anytime sooner.
Conclusion :
PHP will never die. As the strength and reputation, this language has earned is hard to get. Let there be any number of competitors. Still, its developers will always be in demand. It would be advisable to get proper guidance from the best PHP training institute which offers the complete PHP course.
Hope, this blog was able to answer your question. If you want to start your career as a web developer then, you must go for Web Developer Master course offered by ADMEC.
