Why We Use PHP, Despite the Critics
For at least the last 15 years, we’ve heard a recurring cry of “PHP is dead!” Can it ever be replaced?
You don’t need to look at the stats to see that PHP lives on in 2024. It is the backbone of the largest websites online and PHP development is an industry standard. If PHP were to disappear tomorrow, it would leave a gap that no other programming language could fill.
PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page [Tools], introduced by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. Today PHP is a recursive initialism that stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, and a resilient, general-purpose scripting language. It has many uses but is especially suited to web development.
Is PHP Still Relevant?
PHP is by far the most popular server-side language available in 2024. This chart from Web3techs shows usage among the websites with a known server-side programming language: it’s higher than the memes would have you believe.
PHP is regularly updated, with new functions and tools to support cutting-edge websites.
Open Source, Volunteer Supported
Similar to WordPress, PHP is open source. This means no single company owns PHP, and it is available for free download and use for any purpose. Additionally, PHP is supported by a global community of volunteers. This means it is resilient and independent of a single company staying in business to keep it updated.
The latest version, as of this writing, is 8.3, released in November 2023. PHP 8.4 will be coming in November 2024.
A Server-Side Script
PHP is a server-side language, which means it runs on the server that hosts the website, rather than in the user’s browser (client-side).
PHP is commonly used to generate HTML documents for websites. Although PHP files reside on the server, the browser only receives the generated HTML, not the PHP code itself. Client-side languages like AJAX are processed within the browser after the files are downloaded.
To illustrate, using server-side languages is akin to ordering food at a restaurant: you place your order, the kitchen prepares the meal, and you receive it ready to eat. Conversely, client-side languages resemble meal kit delivery services, where you receive the ingredients and must cook the meal yourself.
The benefits of a server-side language
- Your source code stays private, making your website less vulnerable
- It can retrieve files from large databases, making it perfect for building large e-commerce sites
- It doesn’t rely on client-side plugins to run properly.
Using PHP: Versatile, Stable, Scalable.
PHP is a versatile programming language. We use it for command-line scripting, developing desktop applications, web-based applications, integrations with software and more; although its primary use is web development.
“PHP is versatile, stable, scalable, it has clear syntax, and it’s easy to pick up and switch between projects. It’s an industry standard because it is the “Swiss army knife” of programming languages. Over 70% of world web applications and websites are using it from simple brochure websites to enterprise-level solutions.”
– Ciprian Visan, Lead Developer
Swiss army knife is an apt description: PHP has more than 1000 built-in functions and features that make common tasks easier. These include string functions, such as replacing all occurrences of a particular string with a replacement; File functions, such as checking whether a particular file or directory exists; and array functions, such as joining array elements with a string.
The other reason is that PHP is a high-level, interpreted language that has a simple and expressive syntax. It does not require strict typing, memory management, or compilation. This simplicity allows developers to code in their own style, with no restriction on structure.
Frameworks for PHP
Today, a vast library of frameworks is available for use with PHP to provide different features and functionalities for web development.
Some of the most popular ones are:
Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Zend Framework, Yii, Slim, Phalcon, and Lumen.
These frameworks help developers create applications faster and easier by providing features such as routing, templating, validation, authentication, authorization, testing, caching, logging, and more.
PHP runs on almost any platform, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix. It also supports most web servers, such as Apache, Nginx, IIS, and LiteSpeed. It easy to install and can even run without installation using a portable server like XAMPP, which only further fuels its popularity.
Sites Built with PHP
Unless you’ve been living in the woods for the last 15 years, here are a few examples of PHP users we know you have heard of:
- Facebook was initially built using PHP. While Meta has moved away from the programming language over time, it still plays a significant role in their infrastructure.
- Wikipedia, the world’s biggest online encyclopaedia, relies heavily on PHP for its backend operations, content management, and user interactions.
- Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking platform, employs PHP to power its vast network of user-generated content and social interactions.
So many of the largest websites today use PHP, leading many to conclude it is irreplaceable.
“From experience, I can easily see there is no single alternative to replace PHP as a programming language available on the market now. Switching from PHP to something else will create infrastructure problems, will increase production costs, will quadruple development times, will require more specialised staff and will make development slower.”
– Ciprian Visan, Lead Developer
Long Live PHP
With its ease of use, technical prowess and ongoing development and support, there is a lot that speaks for PHP as the go-to solution for web development. As a dev using PHP every day, it’s easy to see just why it has such a large market share.
“PHP is a practical thing, people who use it will always complain to anyone who will listen. Seasoned practitioners understand and just get on with it.”
– Adrian Jones, MD at eSterling