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Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

fagnerbrack.com

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Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#31

Post by Aperocky »

> There was no build step and no deployment pipeline. You changed a .php file. You refreshed the browser. The change was live. This was fast. It was messy. The language let you mix HTML and SQL in the same file. It did not stop you from writing spaghetti

Oh the smell! It's so obvious.

I wonder why though, why does every single AI write like this? There are barely any variance and everything looks exactly the same. Youtube, blogs, linkedin, it is so obvious that everyone is using the same thing, is this even model specific?

I've never been a fan of AI polishing my writings, but now I wouldn't even get it grammar checked. All of my writing that I expect people to read, particularly philosophy and rationale, are one shot stuff that came out of keyboard like this one.

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#32

Post by hparadiz »

nullable_bool wrote: post #30
hparadiz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us have been working with php for 22 years at this point and frankly I think Doctrine is the best ORM period.

What makes it so good? Genuinely curious

It uses a DTO style mapping system and central factory EntityManager making unit testing a breeze. Model definitions let you map database primitives directly from the models. It will automagically build you the table on first use and it's capable of moving data from one engine to another engine on the fly. Migrations are built in and it's capable of generating migrations directly from changes to a model. It's smart about SQL multi saves (transactions), joins for relationships, views, and a bunch of other database features that most ORMs don't even bother to be even aware of let alone implement. It's basically an enterprise level ORM. Functionally it works like ActiveRecord but under the hood it's very different.

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#33

Post by bitvvip »

Everyone is familiar with different things. As long as you can complete your work with the programming language you are familiar with, that's fine. As for which language to learn, it depends on personal interest

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#34

Post by winrid »

hparadiz wrote: post #32
nullable_bool wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it so good? Genuinely curious

It uses a DTO style mapping system and central factory EntityManager making unit testing a breeze. Model definitions let you map database primitives directly from the models. It will automagically build you the table on first use and it's capable of moving data from one engine to another engine on the fly. Migrations are built in and it's capable of generating migrations directly from changes to a model. It's smart a…

Have you used Django's ORM?

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#36

Post by hparadiz »

winrid wrote: post #34
hparadiz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses a DTO style mapping system and central factory EntityManager making unit testing a breeze. Model definitions let you map database primitives directly from the models. It will automagically build you the table on first use and it's capable of moving data from one engine to another engine on the fly. Migrations are built in and it's capable of generating migrations directly from changes to a model. It's smart a…

Have you used Django's ORM?

The first time I heard the name Django was like 15 years ago in college so I'm sure I've used it by hosting some project for one reason or another over the years. Python is just not my go to. Also I maintain my own framework in PHP entirely so that's what I pull off the shelf when I wanna do CRUD.

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#37

Post by mechanicum »

I can believe it’s much improved and I wouldn’t look down on anyone for using it.

But it’s still never going to be a language I like, and I’m yet to encounter any of these modern codebases in the wild. It’s invariably a crusty old relic, much closer to the PHP of 2006 than the PHP of 2026.

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#38

Post by fagnerbrack »

striking wrote: post #6

Here's a chart to replace the mockup with: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_ma... According to this data (the same data referenced by WordPress marketing blog posts[1], if it's legit enough for them it's legit enough for me) WordPress usage across the web stopped growing almost all at once in 2021, with the beginning of a decline this year. You can see an increase of other contenders (Shopify…

In the chart yoy sent wordpress is growinf and "None" is declining. Am I missing something?

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#39

Post by usernametaken29 »

DJBunnies wrote: post #26
usernametaken29 wrote: post #12

“false” === true because it’s not an empty string. It’s the same now that it used to be 10 years ago. The PHP equality operator is a meme, not even a joke

You're thinking of == which type coerces the non-empty string to boolean true. PHP is not the only language that has this type of behavior.

It’s not the only language but it’s notorious for having the worst equality operator to the point where you are not even supposed to use == because it’s that awful

Re: Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)

#40

Post by striking »

fagnerbrack wrote: post #38
striking wrote: post #6

Here's a chart to replace the mockup with: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_ma... According to this data (the same data referenced by WordPress marketing blog posts[1], if it's legit enough for them it's legit enough for me) WordPress usage across the web stopped growing almost all at once in 2021, with the beginning of a decline this year. You can see an increase of other contenders (Shopify…

In the chart yoy sent wordpress is growinf and "None" is declining. Am I missing something?

I'll restate what I'm seeing:

* WordPress remains roughly unchanged over the past five years, until the final datum which is lower than the flat trend.

* None had been decreasing but over the current year to date has increased sharply, correlating with the LLM trend and subjective notions of LLMs having "finally gotten good" for coding, though the trend is rather short.

* Over previous years, Shopify and Wix began to take increasing amounts of market share from WordPress as well as legacy competitors.

Because this chart shows proportions of the web rather than a total number of websites, and by virtue of remaining at the same proportion while the denominator increases, we know that the number of WordPress sites on the web is still increasing even if this is not clearly depicted by the chart. But I would argue the more important story is that WordPress is no longer eating the web as much as it is just consistent, and I think this shows that WordPress is now genuinely a little bit vulnerable as a singular platform choice to learn.

I don't disagree with the fact you had raised about fancy custom React SPA style apps being fairly rare in quantity across the web when so much of the web runs on whatever offering has a decent CMS and isn't too hard to deploy. And WordPress is still a great choice to learn today for those looking to make good money doing web dev, especially in freelance, marketing, e-commerce, etc.

But WordPress may actually finally be on the decline after holding steady after so many years, and having seen this data I would personally have come to a different conclusion than the one your post did.

Maybe I would have said something along the lines of "Despite the constant rumors of the death of PHP, WordPress has grown to serve nearly a majority of the websites on the internet and has held a steady chunk of the market for the last five years. Learning to use it is still many people's best chance at success in web development, even as other trendy technologies appear on the market. Even if WordPress were to significantly decline in popularity, a very large portion of the market for web development would continue to belong to those who chose to learn WordPress." I feel like that is still in the spirit of what your post intended, but with slightly closer alignment to some sort of data.

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