I was never able to move from PHP to something else. I tried nodejs for a few months but it always seemed much more complicated. Especially the dependency and build system.<p>With PHP to move my code to a production system I just need to run `git pull` and the new codebase is instantly live. No builds, no server updates.<p>The Markup system of PHP is also very very handy. No more messing with handlebars or external libraries.<p>Realistically you can start a small site with PHP and HTMX and no external PHP package dependencies in an evening.
PHP has a special place in the story of the web-dev.<p>The whole "no build step" was the most underrated factor for its success, because it was such a low-skill tool to pick up.<p>The tightness of that edit-test-move loop was why I used it, even if the "edit" included "sftp it to a vhost".<p>That bit is what made it successful & I can't think of anything I've used in the last decade which felt as easy as PHP for that particular style of self-taught programmer.
PHP and the ecosystem around it, especially Laravel, makes developers incredibly productive: everything is so damn easy.<p>Nothing comes close to it in Go, Ruby, JS (Node), Python; from what I've seen. Laravel is one step ahead.
PHP is a great language to learn OOP, classes, interfaces, abstract classes, traits, managing dependencies and unit tests. I'm not using it anymore but I learned basically everything with it a decade ago. Thanks PHP!
I thought the blog post would introduce me to how PHP in 2024 somehow got rid of all the cruft from ages ago, but instead it merely talks about some frameworks. Probably high level frameworks are what saves PHP from dying, because they mean, that people don't have to deal with as gnarly PHP all the time, but going so far as being excited about them? Sounds more like a justification to still keep using this language, despite all the other often better language options out there. Heck, I would even prefer writing Java these days, than going back to PHP.
Posts related to PHP usually become discussion if the language sucks or not here on HN. I am co-founder of a PHP PaaS and I can confirm that almost all clients are using frameworks or even CMS systems on top of PHP to build stuff. Why not?<p>I am interested how PHP and frontend tooling will work out in the future. Nobody is compiling JS/CSS with PHP (as far as I see). That is usually done with Node.js. Livewire (and Inertia.js) are bridges. Sometimes PHP becomes a backend to provide an API for an SPA frontend.
In April 2024 PHP reached its lowest position ever in the TIOBE index. It's not even in the top 10 anymore.<p><a href="https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/</a>
Using PHP with docker the default way would require several docker images to run in parallel, i.e., php-fpm, webserver, etc... I use nginx unit to have a standalone docker image with php, webserver and application, similar as you would have it for a node or spring boot application. nginx unit has no support for http 2/3 and you would require a proxy to support that, FrankenPHP seems to be an interesting alternative for my setups, will definitely check it out!
Can anyone help me as a newbie? I see many comments saying php is so simple to use, but I'm getting bogged down with Docker / Composer etc etc. There seems to be a lot to learn, am I going about it the wrong way? What's the simplest setup that I can use for production as well as dev (otherwise I'd just use laragon). Thanks.
Laravel is never going to be competitive with Django/Rails simply because PHP as a language is just not as easy to master as Python/Ruby. There, I said it. Lots of PHP fans write these articles about how PHP is catching up in terms of usability, but nobody is choosing PHP in 2024 (other than truly uninformed people who are just picking their project language at random).<p>The one area where PHP is useful in 2024 is for prototyping a website quickly. As a one-person team, PHP without a framework (and without OOP) is the fastest way to build a fully-functioning complex site. I built a massively complicated site this way, in very little time. This is great because if it ever becomes popular, I can simply hire developers to rewrite it in the latest framework du jour (probably Next/Nuxt/whatever)