Why is PHP unpopular among modern development and why do forums continue to use it

[AndrewSimm]

I spend a lot of time around developers at my day job and have noticed that very few have ever even used PHP. I would guess that the median age of the developers is around 25 years of age. At work, they develop in java. Even most of the vendors that we contract with create web apps in java. I read an article today and it had PHP listed as one of the dying languages. I know Facebook has an affinity for PHP, but my question is what about PHP makes it best for forum software.

 

[jmurrayhead]

This seems entirely subjective. I'm a .NET/C# developer and that's the path I followed for most of my career. I feel there are a lot of people like me, but on the php side, that chose to go down that path. It's what they're familiar with and so that's what they choose to use. I would not say that PHP is dying at all. There are a lot of systems that use it. A lot of people bought into it, IMO, due to it's open source nature, as well. Over the years, I've seen PHP do nothing but improve. I see no reason why it would die. It's still a very viable language for software development. My guess is that the developers at your day job are comfortable with their language and just did not choose to move to PHP.

 

[bzcomputers]

I really don't have a single answer to your question, sometimes I wonder myself.

Her are a couple things that I can think of:
1) It's free to use / open-source
2) It's maintained well and upgraded often, with significant improvements over the years
3) It works with about any database straight out of the box
4) Back in 1995 when the three big ones came out (PHP, Java & Javascript), PHP was much easier to learn than the others

I think now that Facebook and Wordpress are based off PHP, it is the single most popular language for sites and traffic on the internet. So, the good thing is it isn't going anywhere probably in our lifetimes.

 

[AndrewSimm]

This seems entirely subjective. I'm a .NET/C# developer and that's the path I followed for most of my career. I feel there are a lot of people like me, but on the php side, that chose to go down that path. It's what they're familiar with and so that's what they choose to use. I would not say that PHP is dying at all. There are a lot of systems that use it. A lot of people bought into it, IMO, due to it's open source nature, as well. Over the years, I've seen PHP do nothing but improve. I see no reason why it would die. It's still a very viable language for software development. My guess is that the developers at your day job are comfortable with their language and just did not choose to move to PHP.

The developers don't get to choose. I work for a Fortune 100 company, and we hire that skill set. Of course, our vendors can choose what they make their products in, but I have yet to come across one using PHP.

According to Indeed job postings as of January 2019

• Java – 65,986 jobs
• Python – 61,818 jobs
• Javascript – 38,018 jobs
• C++ – 36,798 jobs
• C# – 27,521 jobs
• PHP – 16,890 jobs
• PERL – 13, 727 jobs

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[jmurrayhead]

The developers don't get to choose.

They do. They likely chose this long before working for some company. Developers typically don't choose the language before they get hired. Many choose the language that they're interested in and then get hired after the fact.

our vendors can choose what they make their products in

Of course. And a lot of vendors choose other languages.

but I have yet to come across one using PHP

At your company that specifically chooses Java? Of course you haven't.

According to Indeed job postings as of January 2019

Context is important. In-demand could just mean that it's difficult to fill. Perhaps there really isn't that many Java developers available to be hired. Maybe something else. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that there could be more to it. In my field, I find it very hard to find solid .NET developers. That has a lot to do with my particular market, but still, good developers are hard to find no matter the language.

 

[AndrewSimm]

They do. They likely chose this long before working for some company. Developers typically don't choose the language before they get hired. Many choose the language that they're interested in and then get hired after the fact.

Of course. And a lot of vendors choose other languages.

At your company that specifically chooses Java? Of course you haven't.

Context is important. In-demand could just mean that it's difficult to fill. Perhaps there really isn't that many Java developers available to be hired. Maybe something else. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that there could be more to it. In my field, I find it very hard to find solid .NET developers. That has a lot to do with my particular market, but still, good developers are hard to find no matter the language.

Developers graduate from school with the knowledge that learned in class and outside of class. They consistently know java and consistently don't know PHP. Universities teach what the demand is and that clearly isn't PHP. Outside of HTML, CSS, the languages are typically java and python. When I was in school (15 years ago) I learned some asp.net, though that was an elective class.

I think the indeed statistics stand on their own. At least in my state, every university with a CS program teaches Java, so the supply is pretty good.

 

[meetdilip]

It is not just forums, WordPress too is PHP. The stats were saying that WordPress powers around 50% of websites on the internet. Even if it is much less than that, plugins, addons and core modification needs PHP developers.

 

[Chris D]

I know Facebook has an affinity for PHP

Along with:

• Wikipedia (MediaWiki)
• Fandom (also MediaWiki)
• Tumblr
• Slack
• DailyMotion
• Etsy
• Valve

what about PHP makes it best for forum software.

Evidently, it isn't just forum software that PHP is good for. It's also true that good forum software doesn't have to use PHP. Discourse is written in Ruby. NodeBB is written in Node.js.

 

[Lukas W.]

Universities teach what the demand is and that clearly isn't PHP.

I don't think the choice of programming language is based on what's in demand but on what is best for teaching. Regardless of whether it's in demand or suitable for most applications, Java sports just the right amount of programming principles to teach you all the essentials while not overloading you with some seemingly obscure patterns that you don't see in most languages, along with a compiler and tools that make learning and debugging comparatively easy.

Regardless of that, php obviously wouldn't be any good as base programming language to teach, due to it being primarily centered around web development. After all, that's just a fraction of all available fields.

According to w3techs.com, php powers nearly 80% of all websites, with basically minimal to no decline for the last 5 years.

 

[Liam W]

I'm a member of a general Slack community, and PHP is treated as a bit of a running joke amongst the (many) software egineers in it... the main complaint is that there are several ways to do one thing, and it's very lenient to bad code.

Newer versions have improved somewhat, though some of the features aren't exactly 'complete', but it's not a terrible language, and it is easy to learn. It's good for what it's good for - and that's server-side applications. Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't the only option. NodeJS is fairly popular now (though I'm not a fan), and there's even Swift-based web apps...

 

[Paul B]

Programming language snobbery is alive and well.

 

[Lukas W.]

the main complaint is that there are several ways to do one thing, and it's very lenient to bad code.

NodeJS is fairly popular now (though I'm not a fan)

Node.js and javascript in general kinda tenfold those bad attributes of php. Jokes aside, obviously a language that is more lenient with certain rules allows for more slackish code quality in those areas, but at the end of the day, that is not a fault of the language but the people that use it. As long as it doesn't prevent you from doing it better, it's the programmers responsibility. And sometimes the more lenient rules can make a very complex task very trivial, while still sticking with your code quality guidelines, because you don't have to work around overhead that's only making the task harder than it needed to be.

 

[TLDR]

I think the second question is easier to answer. Forums want to run as painless as possible. Given how wide-spread PHP on web servers is, PHP is a kind of obvious choice for developers.

Why it's unpopular among developers? Dunno. Maybe it's that "they don't know the language". Maybe it's that they learned that "real languages" have to be compiled for the program to execute. Maybe because they see how easy it is to achieve simple stuff. And they see what bad code PHP allows you to write. So they think PHP attracts the unexperienced users. And they don't want to be "one of 'em".

But I think, you can do stupid stuff with any language (look at security fixes in all operating systems and also standard software). And you can do clean code with PHP as well.

 

[RobParker]

the main complaint is that there are several ways to do one thing, and it's very lenient to bad code.

You've heard of python right?

 

[Liam W]

You've heard of python right?

And used it, and hate it. Any language that uses whitespace as a structuring mechanism can go **** itself, in my opinion...

 

[Chris D]

While we’re talking about alternative programming languages, I really have a soft spot for DART.

Fairly new entrant to the arena but it has some very cool features and I think it has a promising future.

 

[Liam W]

I'm pretty much language agnostic, but seeing as PHP is what keeps me liquid, it's the one I use the most. I do also like Go a lot, though. And I'm starting to gain a soft spot for Kotlin...

 

[AndrewSimm]

And used it, and hate it. Any language that uses whitespace as a structuring mechanism can go **** itself, in my opinion...

Python is very good for building statistical models.

 

[AndrewSimm]

While we’re talking about alternative programming languages, I really have a soft spot for DART.

Fairly new entrant to the arena but it has some very cool features and I think it has a promising future.

So when would you choose to use something like react or angular vs PHP? What types of applications would make you use one over the other?

 

[Chris D]

React and Angular are client side languages so you could not use them in place of PHP which is a server side language.