Is PHP a Dying Language?

We live in a world of speculations and the ongoing one in the programming industry is that PHP is a dying language. We as a PHP web development company have enough experience to conclude that this is only speculation.

By the end of this blog, you will learn why PHP’s future is as bright as a day. So, let’s get to it.

Is PHP Dying?

PHP might not be the most sought-after programming language today but it surely isn’t going away soon. It’s the most widely used server-side programming language, powering about 79% of websites around the globe. This data from W3Schools shows that out of 10 websites being created, PHP is used by 8 of them in some or another way.

And this is just a direct application of the language. Other than this, PHP is used by one of the renowned Content Management Systems (CMS) of the world, i.e. WordPress. Since the language was introduced in 1994, it has been coined the title of a “Dying Language” but as per the statistics PHP is highly contributing to the cause.

Top Reasons Why PHP is a Relevant Programming Language

PHP fosters many features that allow developers to create apps that are budget-friendly and time-saving. Here are some of the stand-out features of PHP that state why PHP is here to stay.

Open-Source & Budget-Friendly

The fact that the language is freely available for use is a major point of attraction for IT service providers or freelancers. It’s distributed under the general public license and needs no license or download as it’s open-source.

Having worldwide acceptance the framework can be used for any website design or development task. The language also receives constant updates from the developer community to keep it equipped for bugs and new development trends.

Time-Consuming

Code reusability is possible with PHP as it’s a partially object-oriented language. Due to these reusable components, much time and effort are saved during the development stages. Some of the best PHP frameworks such as Codeigniter, Laravel, WordPress, and Symfony make these functionalities readily available offering secure and fast web development.

If compared to other platforms, PHP is 3 times faster than Python in most use cases. One of the other highlights of PHP is that it’s extremely fast in loading web pages. This highly affects your website’s customer retention and satisfaction rate.

Flexibility

Compared to other programming languages, PHP is well encrypted and therefore is a more flexible language. One can easily create modern-day trending apps making use of this flexibility. Adding to this, PHP is also known for being versatile as it can be easily applied on web servers such as Caudium, Apache, and more. A feat that would require one to hire dedicated PHP developers.

Documentation & Scalability

With PHP one can create highly scalable projects. One can create various pages using different settings. This feat can be achieved even by beginners because of the documentation and transparent code availability.

So when coded intelligently it takes less time to understand what the code is trying to execute. This construct makes it easy to follow an iterative development process. Due to the same one can avoid foot-dragging. This makes PHP a preferred choice for Yii development companies.

Seamless Integration with Different CMSs

Developers can fulfill all their client needs because PHP is highly compatible with numerous CMS programs. Web apps developed using PHP are highly customizable and personalized to deliver the best user experience. A feature that is leveraged best by CodeIgniter web development services. Some of the well-known CMS such as Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress are all based on PHP.

A Transition in Existing Landscape

PHP has a strong association with WordPress and this has inculcated a different perspective within developers. The language is majorly referred to for plugin and theme development than anything else.

The current job prospects are often hired to work with custom frameworks that are created in PHP. Startup or emerging businesses don’t naturally make this choice of putting the language on the table as a potential candidate.

As per the data observed by Darwin Recruitment, a recruitment agency based out of the UK, the graph has gone downward with PHP recruitment. However, there has been an increase in PHP jobs pertaining to certain frameworks. So this doesn’t prove that the number of PHP jobs or demand for the language has lessened over time. This is the reason why it’s the primary choice for top web development companies.

Also, this can be one of the agencies that have observed these unique trends. As opposed to the same, worldwide trends indicate that the search term ‘PHP’ has maintained consistency with a slight decrease in the recent past. Countries like the Philippines and China top the list.

Data Analysis

It’s natural for you as a developer or entrepreneur to have your preferences in the programming languages you like. It’s understandable if you don’t like PHP. We being a Laravel development company are also proficient with other platforms such as React and NodeJS. But our personal prejudice doesn’t prove that a language is dead or if it’s even dying in the first place.

Yes, we can surely agree that PHP has lost some of its popularity with the advent of other advanced web development languages. But even if its popularity decreases at the same rate, around 25 years will pass before it reaches the 50% mark.

So the speculations surrounding the conjecture about “Is PHP Dead?” adhere to Betteridge’s law of headlines i.e. the default answer to any headline that ends with a question mark is ‘No’.

Conclusion

So the final verdict to the question at hand ‘Is PHP Dead’ is ‘No’. The numbers we observed are too high for a language to drop dead out of the blue. But there has certainly been a tactical shift in how the language is being perceived and used for various development projects.

But PHP isn’t as prevalent as an independent language like Javascript. But it surely has an intimate relationship with WordPress as a server-side scripting language. With the content creation ecosystem revolving around PHP, the language doesn’t face any fear of extinction for at least two decades.

Currently, WordPress rules the Content Management System (CMS) arena. Hosting companies on the other hand support WordPress and play a huge role in making PHP more relevant than other server-side languages such as C++ and Java.

So all this hype about PHP being a dead-end is fake news without real facts. As long as WordPress is running strong, PHP will always be relevant. And WordPress is doing absolutely fine. Other strong communities such as Laravel and CakePHP are also adding to the popularity of the language.

We being a CakePHP web development company are well aware of this market due to the numerous PHP projects we’ve worked on and the inquiries we receive from our clientele around the world.

If you’re skeptical about whether you should choose PHP for your next project, don’t be! A veteran of the programming world cannot disappear overnight. What are your thoughts on the future of this language? Please share your views with us in the comments. Thank you for reading.