Meaning and History
PHP expands for PHP: hypertext preprocessor. It is an open-source server-side programming language used to develop the back-end of the web applications. It was developed by a Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. The current stable version of PHP (7.4.9) was released on 6th August 2020.
Widely used CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento is based on PHP. So I think you got the idea of how popular and powerful PHP is.
Want to learn more about it? Visit PHP.
But today, various other languages like Python, Javascript are gaining popularity and creating so much buzz in the market. So now the question arises, Is PHP dead in 2020, or will it die soon??
Usage statistics
If we see the usage statistics, there are some surprising results. Today almost 79% of the websites use PHP to build the back-end of their web applications. You can visit the detailed comparison chart on w3techs.com.
Source: Netcraft
Php usage based on versions:
Source: w3Techs
Now as per the results, we can’t say PHP is dead as of now. There are new technologies in the market gaining more popularity than PHP, fact. But since PHP has such a big share in the market and has been in the market of web development for the past 26 years, no new language can steal the show overnight. The reason is its huge community of developers, ease of usage, comparatively cheap labor, and so many other factors.
Who use it?
If we talk about its actual usage, Many early-stage startups and even medium level businesses are still using PHP and its frameworks (Most popular being Laravel) to serve their clients. Many college pass-outs and freshers in the tech industry still consider PHP as their first server-side programming language to learn and get a job. So if you are a PHP developer and listening to rumors like PHP is in danger or will die after a year of 2, just relax. But there are some hard truths we can’t ignore.
Past trends
If we analyze past trends, PHP is declining. Sad but true. There are some serious drawbacks associated with language like less security, difficulty to scale up and so on which makes people reluctant to use it for big projects.
Conclusion
I think we can predict a decent future for PHP for the next 4-5yrs considering its wide use but maybe it’s the right time to look around some other players in the market like python, Javascript (Node) so that when PHP fades up, we can cope up with the emerging needs of the market.
