Stop-saying-PHP-is-dead

I think the php in html thing has been replaced by templating tools where we write html templates with"template strings" that allow you to put dynamic data into the html, and all the php is concentrated in more well defined libraries.

The amount of logic we used to do with php inside otherwise html files has been shown to be bad software design.

I used to dislike PHP because I was young, naive, and ignorant.

When Laravel came out, it had introduced me to Symfony and at that time I have decided to give it a second chance.

I haven't regretted it ever since.

Are there ugly parts in it? Yep, like every single programming language out there.

But here's the good thing: I have applied SOLID principle thanks tto Symfony and Laravel, which is (at least to me): hide the ugly parts behind a friendlier code base and deal with your newly designed interface.

Not only it makes your code clearer, it makes it extremely easy to follow your logic, plus it motivates you to write more projects just for fun.

About WordPress...yeah, it has its countless quirks, but trust me; it's getting there.

Eventually, it will become a nicer platform for the end-user, especially now that adopts more JavaScript in both back and front end.

All the legacy code is getting upgraded slowly but steady with modern PHP standards, even Composer is being used at some code bases now, plus with modern tools we automate lots of procedures that used to be considered chore.

Now about writing code that can deal with high traffic...you can do that with modern PHP, yes, but you have an extra option nowadays: Swoole!

If Baidu and other Chinese companies are using PHP exclusively, they deal with MILLIONS of people on a daily basis, and contribute back in the language itself (core / swoole extension), what else do you want?!

Is it dead?

Not even close, especially now with the release of PHP 8.0 that gets closer to enterprise standards!

Perl is still actively developed and used. It definitely doesn't have the market share it once had but I wouldn't go so far as to call it dead.

I have started one side project , and one startup this last 3 month, all in php/symfony, though I have made extensive use of python (and php) in the past (and do a lot of rust on the side)

1. A mature ecosystem: Symfony is really really mature, all use case of a classic website are covered:

   * easy "admin" generation -> check

   * easy styling of your forms (a guy already made a 'tailwind' template, now I just do {{ form(my_form }}, and that's it

   * easy integration with webpack for my usecase with tailwind

   * pretty fast load to the point that the backoffice feels like a SPA (no flickering)

   * word-class ORM (Doctrine is just the best ORM ever, they really got right the 'if you know SQL, you will not have to learn yet an other dialect, all our functions/method use the exact same naming as in SQL , take that django ORM)

   * once again word-class ORM (Doctrine make it very easy to use all postgres-only, or mind you, mysql-only feature, DATE_TRUNC , json operators, full-text search operators  etc. etc.)

   * The documentation is not only encyclopedic , but also 'cookbook' (i.e you can either go A to Z, or they have dedicated article "how to have 2 database" , "How to implement a login through JSON" , which are much better and up to date than googling "how to X with framework Z"

2. PHP type system, sorry python but mypy just doesn't make it, I love my typechecking at runtime, how many times good willing developers in python have put `def myfunction(something: dict)` but it was actually not a dict, but a generator, and boom the next dev is mislead and introduce a bug

3. easy as hell to find developers, developers that likes to get things done and that are pragmatic (They know, I know, we all know PHP have shortcomings, do we joke about it? yes. Does it prevent us from moving forward ? no)

Like its always been, back-end web dev