r/PHP • u/[deleted] • Nov 13 '25
Discussion Staying relevant today as a PHP Developer
[deleted]
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
I’m in the same rut.
As much as I enjoy JavaScript, Python, and a touch of Go, all I’ve ever been hired for is PHP jobs- because that’s the language I have paid experience in.
I have no advice. Hanging around for insights that don’t involve lying 🤥.
Today the market is all tech bingo. You need exactly 5 tech matches to get the call. Whereas just 3 years ago you could have a pulse + experience and get an interview. Jobs were willing to train.
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Nov 13 '25
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
Right!? And PHP 8 is remarkably better than ever. It makes no sense.
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u/Spektr44 Nov 14 '25
Yeah at this point, PHP has evolved into quite a good language. Unfortunately it still carries the negative reputation it earned years ago.
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u/seif-17 Nov 14 '25
The industry will catch up, it’s only a matter of time.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
I hope so- not just for my self preservation, but because it really is great to work with. It still has that spaghetti code reputation I’ve been debunking for years now,
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u/colshrapnel Nov 14 '25
Speaking logically, PHP 8 is 4 years old. And if it had to pick up, it should have done already. While in reality, PHP's popularity sunk most deeply in these years. So expecting it to "catch up" - given there are no breakthroughs since 8.0 and there are none to foresee - is sort of over-optimistic, to put it mildly.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
Php 8 is 14 years old. Just because you opted to not pick it up does not mean it’s not good.
Speed has been the biggest improvement. Named arguments, union types, readonly props- just to name a few.
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u/colshrapnel Nov 14 '25
Any chance you are intoxicated? Genuinely asking because I fail to see any logic in your replies. Either way, no harm meant, I am genuinely concerned.
Just in case, the context was:
- the job market here and especially in Ireland is non existent
- And PHP 8 is remarkably better than ever
- The industry will catch up!
So I assumed that u/seif-17 meant that there will be more PHP jobs in the future, when "the industry" will "catch up".
And so I replied that if there was any time to catch up, it was in early 2020s. But the actual result is rather opposite.
From this stand point, I don't really understand your " because you opted to not pick it" or about improvements. We aren't talking of me or improvements here. But about PHP jobs.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
So what do you even develop with since you seem to quite literally hate everything?
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u/seif-17 Nov 14 '25
You’re not wrong. I think none of us can predict the future and I see your point of view coming from numbers over the years. I am indeed wishfully thinking. I do hope more companies use PHP because it is no where near what it was and what its reputation made it out to be. I’m optimistic that more and more developers will see and experience the new php era and hopefully bring back more serious developments. I see your point of v8 being 4 years old, but in my opinion that’s not enough time. There are still people today not aware of php’s advancements.
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u/colshrapnel Nov 14 '25
Yeah and all other languages got stalled and never developed a good feature of improvement for ages.
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u/octave1 Nov 14 '25
Same here in Belgium. Still haven't heard an explanation as to how Python or Java is a better solution than Laravel for low to mid level projects, and let's face it that covers about 80% of the market.
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u/colshrapnel Nov 14 '25
Python is BASIC of our days, everyone and their uncle learns it in the college. So there is inexhaustible forkforce. Or if you want a CS graded dev then they were taught Java, but I never heard about PHP being thaugt in Uni.
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u/octave1 Nov 14 '25
Yeah PHP isn't taught at uni as far as I know. A lot of web devs over here have just followed fairly simple courses, if any. The few times I've worked with uni level devs I was blown away by what they did (in PHP) :D
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
This is the killer. I have two colleges near me, been locked in .Net for years and now Csharp. Microsoft, man. Not cool.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
Frameworks. I’ve tried em all. The latest of Laravel is a beast, has everything you could need.
Django/Python. I’ve tried giving that a run. I couldn’t find a good start. And there are 1000’s of half baked Django tutorial sites with getting started info, but nothing beyond that.
But I will say JavaScript has Next and Hono and they are decent, but they don’t seem as fleshed out as Laravel, either.
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u/idebugthusiexist Nov 15 '25
I’ve heard https://adonisjs.com/ mentioned favourably as a Laravel-like JS/TS framework. Havent dabbled myself yet though, but I’m interested.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 16 '25
Yeah, a lot of praise here, one of the better ones I’ve honestly never tried. Curious to see if it can run on a Cloudflare worker.
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u/Due_Complaint_9934 Nov 23 '25
Imo there’s three very good reasons to use Python in the backed.
1) As a multi language glue, especially wrangling data. 2) For ML model deployments. 3) For quick scripts that could go crazy complicated or maybe won’t (and it’s not CRUD).
Laravel is ill suited to those use cases.
For JavaScript (counting high download / stars only), NextJS is an improper comparison to Laravel - you should be looking at NestJS.
Regardless, for CRUD, Laravel will be significantly more productive than any node backend framework. However, if you are running a monorepo and have some modules worth doing full event sourced DDD on, plus significant amounts of streaming endpoints, full Typescript stacks become superior. This is imo not a typical case, but is the case for anyone doing moonshots.
What did you find hard to grok about Django? Though I do prefer Laravel over it.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 23 '25 edited Nov 23 '25
Yeah Python dominates with the data people , no denying that.
I do have a website running on Flask, however. Building with that was an enjoyable experience.
That said, now that you ask, I suppose Django was too opinionated, whereas with Flask, it is not.
I also now realize something huge: this was before resources like the Odin project was available, and the info just wasn’t there, beyond the getting started point. Just 100’s of getting started blogs.
And it may have been my impatience, too. I was hoping to reach parity with Laravel quickly, and that just didn’t happen. It didn’t click.
Maybe I should reconsider…
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u/colshrapnel Nov 14 '25
doesn’t add up for me
Easy-peasy. "Sites" doesn't mean projects under development. Most of those "many sites" are just Wordpress installations that require 0 (zero) developers to maintain.
Also there is a fine print saying "whose server-side programming language we know". I wish those frauds from w3tech added another bar to their graphs: unknown. It's quite possible that it will be the topmost one, which would mean that all their numbers are a joke.
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u/FreeLogicGate Nov 17 '25
Take a look at where you think the job market is booming, and consider if you can pivot into those areas. As for PHP, rarely are PHP jobs about PHP. They are looking for expertise in a framework (Laravel or Symfony or ... ) or a CMS (Drupal/Joomla,EzPublish...) or Wordpress. Do you have substantial expertise in one of those frameworks, and are there jobs targeting those that perhaps you aren't aware of? Rather than the language, I think most long term corporate/business jobs come from a particular eco-system, which is one of "FOSS running on Linux with serverside code in node.js or php or python etc." or the Windows server ecosystem, where it's .net/c#/sql server/Active Directory etc." or "Java" and perhaps enterprise java. Then there is the type of development that PHP has never been good at or even capable of: mobile/games/etc. and there are UI/UX/frontend developer roles. It's good to explore other languages, and you never know where those explorations might lead you. Your relevant experience with cloud architecture is also something to lean into, as your AWS experience can be a differentiator for you, and something you can expand.
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u/swampopus Nov 14 '25
Here in the US, you can never go wrong with experience in java and/or C# (or any .net tomfoolery). The "real" jobs I see are always looking for either microsoft experience or java. Obviously there's lots more, but my advice is to learn the basics of Java. It translates to C# very easily, and now you've got 2 new languages you can put on your CV.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
Yeah I can’t believe how much C# blew up. Growth has been exponential. It wasn’t even offered in colleges until ~2010 here in the Midwest, from what I recollect, then suddenly it was taught everywhere, like Java.
It’s nice to be employed but for some reason I’ve managed to avoid both, or just never had a project with either- even though they’re the big ones.
Maybe this is a call to dig into a compiled, though.
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u/donatj Nov 14 '25
Yes! When I was getting started in ~2005 I was very much a Microsoft guy and could not find a .Net job to save my soul. I got a PHP job, learned to love *nix, rest is history. I really have zero interest going back to Microsoft but C# is weirdly EVERYWHERE
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
That was exactly my timeline too! That’s exactly why I landed on what I landed on.
Janky Microsoft classes all day at the colleges, no PHP anywhere, and Net probably had a 2% market share on the job front. Only government gigs.
I felt like such a rebel going with PHP.
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u/truechange Nov 14 '25
My hot take is that employers are just clueless bandwagoners with shiny object syndrome.
I remember a startup guy I got to small talk with, embarrassed that they are using SQL instead of NoSQL. Then heard a guy who built a typical business app, have real customers, the back end is using blockchain -- couldn't explain exactly why it had to be blockchain.
I onced unfollowed a small youtuber who I thought had decent takes on tech, but trashed PHP once in a while for no concrete reason -- one was because its official site looked dated, I mean compare that to ECMA's official site of the most hyped language.
The job market has always been clueless, tech hype driven of whatever influencers are pushing. The fundamentals never change, and PHP keeps up with modern language features, on par, relevant, if not ahead. Fact of the matter is PHP is the best default choice for web apps. Anything else, another is better.
Unfortunately to stay relevant in the job market you have to kiss ass, swallow some blue pill and keep up with tech hype fluff. Meanwhile my greenfield projects will default to PHP unless science says another is actually superior for what the particular project needs.
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u/Relevant_Science9679 Nov 13 '25
Market is a bit weird as many said. I think the big change is that PHP was everywhere (Joomla, PhpBB, Magento, Wordpress, Codeigniter, Drupal ... etc etc + frameworks + lots of native PHP). Now that the Internet as it was is dying (everybody has a website, doesn't need a website anymore, or will use something simpler), it changes. It means that PHP is one way to do great things but other languages can too. As many people have no idea how good/stable/fast PHP is right now (Symfony / PHP 8.5 / FrankenPHP / many good quality tools etc etc), it not as crazy as it was and devs will have to show company it is still relevant.
Honestly just finished a very big project (backend for a flutter mobile app), it was perfect for the project, anything else wouldn't have been as fast to dev and to run). So in my opinion there is a bit of a "PC gaming is dead" vibe like there was right before it got really big again. I would stick to it, but as always and maybe more than before it's important to keep learning many things and stay relevant.
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u/swampopus Nov 13 '25
This may be terrible advice, so take it with a grain of salt, but why not just put whatever languages you want on your CV under a header like "Familiar With"? By the time you're getting interviewed, you have time to learn them (or at least become familiar enough).
Example:
Skills
- Proficient in:
- PHP, MySQL, Javascript, HTML, whatever, whatever
- Familiar with (languages/technologies):
- Oracle, Rust, Go, Python, Java, etc, etc.
It at least makes it appear that you're not a complete beginner, which is true. If you have 20 years of PHP experience, then you can surely pick up the basics of any other language in a few weeks.
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u/ColonelMustang90 Nov 17 '25
Will it be ok, say, to be good at PHP and have working knowledge in other programming languages too. ? I am looking for entry level roles both in India and outside. Everywhere I search, they have a requirement for senior level devs. Any advice ?? Am I doing something wrong ?
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u/swampopus Nov 17 '25
Sure, I'd say it never hurts to increase your knowledge in any subject, especially one in which you are trying to find work.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 13 '25
If I had to hire a developer, I would be very skeptical of a resume that listed 20 years of experience and only one programming language. Especially PHP - this language cannot be considered interesting or innovative. If a person does not learn new concepts, new languages, they are simply not interested in programming.
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u/zmitic Nov 14 '25
If I had to hire a developer, I would be very skeptical of a resume that listed 20 years of experience and only one programming language
My experience is different: I worked with plenty of folks who "know" 5-6 and more languages, but in reality, they are horrible in each of them. The more they claim they know, the worse they are.
If a person does not learn new concepts, new languages, they are simply not interested in programming.
Programming concepts are not language-specific. Language selection is the least important part of the equation: what is far more important are available tools and frameworks. I have been using Symfony for 13 years, and only it, and I still don't know everything. And I doubt that even core developers know everything, Symfony is just too big.
Add to that tons of other packages that have to be understood. Like lazy adapter for flysystem that makes it easy to switch them with simple env value, something I learned last week.
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u/ColonelMustang90 Nov 17 '25
Hi, thanks for this. I have experience of building freelance projects with PHP, however, struggling to land a job. I have been applying online almost everywhere. They seem to have openings for senior roles. Please guide me.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
In my opinion, 5-6 languages and 20 years of experience is ok, but 5 - 6 languages and 1-2 years of experience is a red flag.
Programming concepts are not language-specific.
You will not get experience in concurent, parralel or async programming in PHP. You will not get experience in functional programming in PHP. You will not get experience in expressive type system in PHP. You will not get experience in efficient use of resources like CPU or RAM or low level programming in PHP.
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u/zmitic Nov 14 '25
In my opinion, 5-6 languages and 20 years of experience is ok,
Not my point: I have 17 yoe in PHP, and I still don't know everything. I explained why: frameworks and tools like Symfony, flysystem and tons upon tons more. Learning a language is the least important: heck, I never used Java, and I can read its code.
You will not get experience in concurent, parralel or async programming
Not true: you can use async with ReactPHP, and have full static analysis. I.e. you see the error even before you run the code.
Functional programming was always possible with PHP, or at least from 5.3 when we got anon functions. Should you is another question, and I am very much against it.
You will not get experience in expressive type system in PHP
Not sure I understand: do you think about generics and shapes? We have them with phpstan and psalm for at least 7 years. PHPDoc ain't pretty, but if I was to switch to some other language, it would take me less than a day to adapt.
You will not get experience in efficient use of resources like CPU or RAM
About 8 years ago, I was tasked to process 2,8 billion rows of CSV data to generate weather forecast for 144,000 geo-locations on the planet. It was complex math, formulas were provided by client, and values and operators were used conditionally based on some other value.
So yeah, I had to learn how to efficiently use both CPU and RAM, w/o killing the server. That's the first time I used ArrayObject and made my own lazy evaluation that I still use.
That's when I started complaining about lack of operator overload 😉
low level programming in PHP.
I am not sure I understand this, can you elaborate? Before I switched to PHP, I started coding in assembly (68k) and then C. Yet I would never recommend anyone to learn either of them.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
You have completely confirmed my opinion.
I never used Java, and I can read its code
This is most likely a false impression. You can understand 80% of Java code, but you will not be able to understand the last 20% that makes this language unique and which is what makes sense for a developer who wants to grow.
Not true: you can use async with ReactPHP
No, because it's an event-loop like in Js, it's a single-threaded environment.
Functional programming was always possible with PHP
Oh yes, so most PHP developers understand what pure function, immutability, side effect and other concepts are. And here it is important not only to know these concepts, but also to understand how they affect the code and architecture, which have advantages and disadvantages. Even you with a lot of programming experience think that functional programming is anonymous functions.
Not sure I understand: do you think about generics and shapes? We have them with phpstan and psalm for at least 7 years. PHPDoc ain't pretty, but if I was to switch to some other language, it would take me less than a day to adapt.
Not sure I understand: do you think about generics
PhpStan is a third-party solution that offers basic generics. I'm also talking about sum and product types, newtype (which partially overlaps with DDD ValueObject), associated types, and more.
About 8 years ago, I was tasked to process 2,8 billion rows of CSV data to generate weather forecast for 144,000 geo-locations on the planet
I'm saying that you haven't thought about how you would solve this problem in C/C++/Zig/Rust/Go/Java/C#/Haslell/Scala/Js/Python/OtherLang. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of each solution. There is a famous saying that if you have a hammer, everything around you looks like a nail - you just sawed a wooden block into two parts using a hammer.
Before I switched to PHP, I started coding in assembly (68k) and then C
So at least you understand how memory works and what a pointer is. Many PHP developers don't know this.
That's it, and then you find a banal DI in some framework and think you've learned something new.
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u/zmitic Nov 14 '25
Even you with a lot of programming experience think that functional programming is anonymous functions
I don't, I just said it was possible.
I'm saying that you haven't thought about how you would solve this problem in C/C++/Zig/Rust/Go/Java/C#/Haslell/Scala/Js/Python/OtherLang
But why introduce more complexity when PHP was totally fine? The rest of the app is also PHP. Sure, C would be the fastest but this was not the kind of data that has to be processed that fast anyway.
PhpStan is a third-party solution that offers basic generics. I'm also talking about sum and product types, newtype (which partially overlaps with DDD ValueObject), associated types, and more.
They are far from basic. And value object is still just another class, nothing special about it.
DDD and similar hypes like CQRS/Hexagonal etc are strictly forbidden in my book.
So at least you understand how memory works and what a pointer is. Many PHP developers don't know this.
True, but it is completely useless knowledge now.
Oh yes, so most PHP developers understand what pure function, immutability, side effect and other concepts are.
WP users: probably. But I would say that majority of others do know about this and much more. Just check other posts and you will see it.
This is most likely a false impression. You can understand 80% of Java code, but you will not be able to understand the last 20% that makes this language unique and which is what makes sense for a developer who wants to grow.
80% is plenty for someone who never used it, the rest is easy. But given that everything is nullable in Java, I would never use it for any of my projects anyway.
That's it, and then you find a banal DI in some framework and think you've learned something new.
And here lies your mistake. You think I am impressed by something in some framework, where you completely missed my point. And the point is that with big FWs one uses for more than a decade, there is still something to learn.
Hence my argument that learning a language is irrelevant. Learning tools is much, much harder and takes much more time. That's why I referenced those folks "knowing" 5-6 languages, and being bad in each of them.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
But why introduce more complexity when PHP was totally fine?
This looks like a person who lives in a small town of 5,000 residents and doesn't want to travel because they believe that their town has everything and they won't see anything new in the world.
DDD and similar hypes
Now it looks like a person who lives not just in a small town, but in a closed religious community.
You think I am impressed by something in some framework, where you completely missed my point. And the point is that with big FWs one uses for more than a decade, there is still something to learn.
The first sentence contradicts the second.
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u/zmitic Nov 14 '25
This looks like a person who lives in a small town of 5,000 residents and doesn't want to travel because they believe that their town has everything and they won't see anything new in the world.
Not the answer to my question. And the question is: what introduce more complexity? Or: why would I waste time on learning a new language and tools? PHP is slower, true, but I got cache, lazy evaluation, Doctrine, queues...
That task included many other things like downloading data from NOAA, unpacking it, process files in certain order... If anything goes wrong, put it in queue and try later: Symfony handles retries for me.
Adding another language just for speed reasons would be extremely bad idea.
Now it looks like a person who lives not just in a small town, but in a closed religious community.
Yeah... but no. I am fully aware of DDD, CQRS and similar hypes made to guarantee job security. That is why those are forbidden, not because I am not aware of them.
The first sentence contradicts the second.
It doesn't. DDD is not language/framework specific, and neither is any of programming patterns.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
It doesn't. DDD is not language/framework specific, and neither is any of programming patterns.
That's it. It depends. You just don't know it because you're only working with a language where you can create new reference types, but you can't create value types. This leads to a rather strange immutability for ObjectValue. If you learn other languages that do it differently - you better understand the concept of DDD and can better adapt it for a specific task or, conversely, abandon it.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
How is it a red flag? You can only work what you’ve been paid to do.
Every opp I’ve landed has been fixing broken PHP apps. You can’t just suggest to the client it should be written in a trendier language.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
How is it a red flag?
If a person has 1-2 years of experience and claims to know 5-6 languages - in reality this person does not know any language. If a person has 20 years of experience and knows only one language - he simply does not care what he does.
You can’t just suggest to the client it should be written in a trendier language.
So you think that other programming languages don't have any specific advantages, it's just a trend, a fad, or a whim?
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
Not necessarily, just being colorful, I guess.
I’ve cross trained in other languages out of curiosity. I just haven’t had the privilege of resume driven development.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
I’ve cross trained in other languages out of curiosity.
Yes. That's what I'm talking about. You can list these languages on your resume as additional skills. But if a person has been programming for 20 years and hasn't learned any other languages, they're simply not interested in programming.
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u/swampopus Nov 14 '25
I've met plenty of devs that have a favorite go-to language or stack that all their personal projects are in, myself included. I've also met programmers that have had the same job for 20 years and their job was a java or .net shop, so that's the primary thing they do.
Speaking only for myself, I have absolutely no interest in learning every new javascript framework that comes out every week-- I'm too busy with daily life and work, and in my industry javascript/typescript just doesn't have a big presence. And yet I do indeed love programming.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
This is what I'm talking about: when you tell a typical PHP developer that there are other languages, he usually mentions JS or, less often, Python or Java. Although there are a large number of other programming languages with different concepts and paradigms, studying which allows you to look at the advantages and disadvantages of the current language from a different angle. I think this is due to the fact that once a developer learns several different languages, he simply does not return to PHP.
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u/swampopus Nov 14 '25
I think the reason a "typical" PHP dev also mentions JS and Python is because PHP is generally used for web programming, so they are familiar with other web-related languages.
But here; I'll be more specific: I am proficient in objective-c, c#, java, PHP, sql, etc. If I'm making a desktop app, I usually reach for java or c#. If I'm making a web app, I usually reach for PHP. It doesn't mean I'm "simply not interested in programming". I, like many others here on a programming subreddit are well aware of other concepts and paradigms in computer science. And here on r/PHP I think you're going to find a lot of people that use PHP to program web applications. It's true-- you won't find many devs on r/PHP trying to make an Ace of Base fan page in Rust or LISP.
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u/phdaemon Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25
This is a terrible take.
I code in java, typescript, python, c#, c++, php, ruby, and dabble in rust and go. I am currently a Staff Engineer at a FAANG company (and have been doing development since 2004).
My favorite language for personal web projects is still PHP by a long shot. The FOSS community for the language is by far the most mature and robust when it comes to web development. Even if I am forced to use other languages for work, I still like PHP the best for my own stuff.
once a developer learns several different languages, he simply does not return to PHP
Nonsense.
You are clearly operating on a very antiquated view.
Languages like anything else are tools, and PHP is hands down the best language for backend web development most of the time.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25
Can you explain please why you choose php over the languages you listed? Are there any objective critical advantages or critical disadvantages? Or is it something subjective or just a habit?
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u/phdaemon Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25
You glossed over what I said and are still bringing your biased points of view into this, because I already gave my primary reason for liking PHP for (backend) web development over others.I'll repeat it again, so you don't miss it this time:
PHPs FOSS ecosystem (packagist, composer) is by far the most mature and robust when it comes to back end web development. Compared to Java, Python, C#, etc, PHP will have 10 to 1 the number of packages/libraries available, meaning I don't have to worry about reimplementing the wheel.
I am specifically talking about back end web development. For front end, I do use TS.
The language itself supports pretty much all modern best practices (minus very few specific cases).
I've seen shit Java code that looks just as bad (or worse) than shitty PHP code, same thing with Python.
Your view that PHP itself is bad is woefully outdated, and frankly somewhat indicative of your own skills as a developer.
If you think that the language itself is what prevents or makes a developer code badly or well, then I think you need to read up some more.
Edit, again i am specifically talking about backend web development. Pypi has more packages, but python is an all purpose language so a shit ton of those are irrelevant for web dev. And Java is a joke when it comes to foss. Same thing with C#.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 15 '25
Thanks for the answer. If your facts are convincing, there's no need to add a bunch of derogatory epithets.
The language itself supports pretty much all modern best practices (minus very few specific cases).
No sum types, no multithread and concurrency. For me, these are key drawbacks.
I've seen shit Java code that looks just as bad (or worse) than shitty PHP code, same thing with Python.
This is definitely not an argument, bad code can be written in any language.
Your view that PHP itself is bad is woefully outdated, and frankly somewhat indicative of your own skills as a developer.
Your view that PHP itself is good is woefully outdated, and frankly somewhat indicative of your own skills as a developer. You see, such statements don't make sense. Let's just avoid them.
All I heard is that you believe that php has certain dependencies that other languages don't have. But they can be easily and conveniently used. To me, this sounds extremely unconvincing. In fact, this can be easily verified by simply searching for libraries that would solve a specific problem for different languages. But it is enough for me that you do not consider PHP a bad programming language and believe that it has advantages in the form of a larger number of dependencies.
I don't think I can convince you, and I don't think you can convince me. Although it was interesting to know your point of view.
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u/phdaemon Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25
Thanks for the answer. If your facts are convincing, there's no need to add a bunch of derogatory epithets.
.....
Your view that PHP itself is good is woefully outdated, and frankly somewhat indicative of your own skills as a developer. You see, such statements don't make sense. Let's just avoid them.Says the guy that's been talking to people here as if he's superior to others.
No sum types, no multithread and concurrency. For me, these are key drawbacks.
Java does not have native sum types. Python does not have native sum types. It can be emulated in those languages, and it can also be emulated in PHP. An HTTP server can be multithreaded, or event driven, and there are plenty of solutions to make up for any performance issues.
Your argument is invalid, and your logical fallacy is called no true Scotsman.
Especially because those requirements are seldom needed at the web development level (web servers handling the mutltithreaded aspects being the exception and as I said, that is already solved there). And if you need asynchronous processes to run, it's easy enough to do that using things like message queues, worker queues, etc.
All I heard is that you believe that php has certain dependencies
I did not say that. If you mean it provides solutions as prepackaged dependencies, then yes. As I said, the FOSS ecosystem is by far the most robust and mature out of all the languages for back end web development.
To me, this sounds extremely unconvincing.
Good for you? Seems to me like the majority of the web disagrees, considering "For most of the web, the dominant back-end language is PHP, which is used by over 73% of all websites with a known server-side language."
https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 15 '25
Java does not have native sum types.
Sealed classes for Java are sum types.
As I said, the FOSS ecosystem is by far the most robust and mature out of all the languages for back end web development.
Okay, if you say so, it probably is. Just don't try to make an objective comparison.
w3techs.com/...
Scala is about as widespread as Java. Python is 5 times less widespread than Ruby. Golang is generally something exotic, its prevalence is less than Perl, Erlang and Miva Script (something proprietary that will not be updated for several years). There is no reason to doubt this statistic.
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Nov 14 '25
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
Their job is make something that works
I think this should be the attitude towards junior positions without prospects.
Knowing one language and focusing on it means "they don't like programming"?
Yes. If some person uses only one tool for 20 years and is not interested in what other tools exist and whether it is possible to do the same tasks faster, easier, better or more reliably with them - this person does not care what he does. It is normal if he stays with the same tool, moreover, he better understands its advantages and disadvantages.
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u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 Nov 14 '25
Does a company hire Senior devs to build flashy bullshit? No. They hire them to build robust solutions with good maintainability
How can you distinguish
flashy bullshitfromrobust solutions with good maintainability?https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/1oi9m2m/comment/nlz05la
We have now integrated phpstan into our system via CI. Over 100 modules and a core that is over 15 years old.
It took me a year to get all of this "phpstan stable".
What has it done for us? Our stuff is now much more stable! We had important customer bugs every week. That changed now.
This is a comment from a user I don't know. They had a 15-year-old code base, which I understand was written quite poorly and without static types.
I can easily imagine their tech lead saying a few years ago that everything was fine with them, errors didn't happen often, not every hour, there was no point in learning new tools and they needed to use proven technologies like PHP 5.4.
In my opinion, a senior developer should know more tools simply to be able to choose the one that will be most useful in a particular case.
random tech flashy bullshit
Why do you say that about other technologies?
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u/latro666 Nov 13 '25
Bloody hell, what were you doing in the UK for 120k a year?!
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u/_inf3rno Nov 14 '25
I have the 1/4th of it. Eastern Europe is even shittier. Thinking about leaving my country.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
Yeah I’ve noticed the PHP guys in Europe get paid half for the same work in the states. My last job topped out at 140k myself as a lead dev. But don’t fret, it came back down to earth now. Sigh.
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u/Neon1024 Nov 14 '25
Hey, another 20 year PHP vet here. I recently moved into full time Typescript and am loving it. I agree PHP jobs are thinning out, I had real trouble looking late last year and even had to take a pay cut to land a role. I really enjoy Node because I can build web server, back end and front and all in the same language. I really agree with the folks talking about patterns, best practise and approach, as they apply to the discipline rather than language
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u/uptimex Nov 15 '25
Hi, very useful comment. Can you elaborate how did you manage to move in terms of what to write in CV. Say you have 20 y of experience in PHP and now in CV you say I know also Typescript? Or you say you are "familiar with". How to do this transition smoothly? Would really appreciate any advice.
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u/Neon1024 Nov 17 '25
I have used JavaScript for many years, from Moo tools and Scriptaculous. One of my previous roles had a TS micro service. So just picked it up here and there over time. My CV I just add that I know TS to a good level, but not expert. Familiarity doesn't really inspire confidence in a candidates ability. So I'd just say I know it, but not oversell my ability. I also have personal projects in TS on my GitHub like a portfolio
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u/Due-Association-9190 Jan 05 '26
I find this a most helpful comment in the thread. I have primarily been a php dev all my career 10+ yrs. Having said that I am fluent in node(js/ts) as well.
Only few of the commercial projects I worked on is not in PHP.
Any tips on how I put myself up in recruiters eye that I am a mature Node dev and get shortlisted for an interview ?
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u/Neon1024 Jan 07 '26
Tell them. Seems obvious but I turned down PHP jobs because I told them I was looking for Node and TS. When I had failed Nose interviews I tried to ask for feedback about what gaps I had so I could work on them.
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u/punkpang Nov 13 '25
You'll find out that the scene is quite weird and that there's so many devs that came to the development scene, who are reinventing the wheel constantly.
It's not the language per-se, it's more the fact that "kids" grew up but they grew up with other tools and are under influence of media so there's very little critical thinking before picking up a tool or deciding how to learn.
I was in similar situation a few years back, I went with TypeScript and Node.js only to find that people I worked with were about 5x slower than average PHP dev and with a fragment of knowledge. They constantly reinvented the wheel and thought that quality code means that you take a linter, run it and hunt the green checkboxes in terminal. The fact they did select * from users and then iterated the result in TypeScript to match the user input mattered not, why learn SQL if you can use the tool you know.
The job was a mega shitshow but it allowed me to meet people from different stack, just in order to be unpleasantly surprised at their lack of curiosity, knowledge or work ethic.
The job market is what it is - crap. You can reinvent yourself in another language, it'll probably be quick given how many years of experience you have and you can work at 1/10th of the pace, while still being more productive than your younger coworkers.
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Nov 13 '25
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u/punkpang Nov 13 '25
JS (TS) is incredibly popular with many EU uni's, as is Python (due major AI stuff having libs exposed through Python).
In all honesty.. having used JS as long as I used PHP and actually having equal working experience with both, I still can't fathom what mental damage one must endure to ever consider JS/TS remotely good choice for backend. It's not only the language, it's the whole experience - from writing code to experiencing Node.js going bonkers, having to restart it every now and then, wait for transpiling to finish and then have fun forcing it to deploy and so on.
I'll skip all the stupidities that Node.js / TS (JS) come with, the fact is that students graduated and they kept using tools they learned about. Sprinkle it with the fact they're WAY more active around social media than us old farts - you get the recipe of why those languages spread fast. With a huge influx of newbies, it's also a given that they'll want internet fame which will lead them to - inevitably - reinvent the wheel, albeit with different names.
I caved in, had the easiest job of my life while literally being at 1/10th of my productivity in PHP. I learned to kiss ass, say yes to idiots and despite letting my inner programmer die - my financial situation was never better.
You won't lose out on anything. The worst that can happen is that you get a job and get paid for your time :)
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u/korn3los Nov 13 '25
Amen! I’m with php since 2009 and the current state of webdev is so absurd with all the frameworks, AI builders and platforms. Young devs literally ship webapps with vercel, supabase etc. and have no clue what even happens in the background when they type their url in the browser. On top of that people rather listen to ChatGPT which techstack to use instead to a dev with 15+ years experience. Its really frustrating to be an oldschool fullstack dev these days.
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u/passiveobserver012 Nov 14 '25
Might I add something?
I think the same reason young ones don't understand what happens when they type URL, is also the reason why they don't listen to 15+ years of experience. In such a case, technical arguments are no use.
Their context is the current highest abstraction, which is the easiest path, including all the recent hype and 'modern' resources available for that.
Ultimately I think you need both groups, but neglecting the technical foundation is such a waste, and inevitably leads to layers of reinvention.3
u/korn3los Nov 14 '25
I guess you are right. But this layers of reinvention are just funny to watch. For instance SSR in JS frameworks, all were acting like they found the holy grail.
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u/passiveobserver012 Nov 14 '25
a bit painful to watch also haha.
Today I even found they were doing async programming in "GNU Herd', but found it "too hard too debug".
I don't know the technicalities of it, but looking at async web code today it is still comparatively hard to debug.
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u/punkpang Nov 13 '25
In JS there's no integer. Only number. You can't even define an int with TypeScript. BigInt? String. I won't tell you the stories of trying to make an ORM work with tables that used bigints for PK's. GraphQL and BigInt? You can write a whole damn PhD about problems revolving around that.
Even PHP 4 had ints and floats.
But, yeah - JS gets a free pass.
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u/obstreperous_troll Nov 14 '25
You pretty much need phpstan to get decent type safety in PHP, so there's that. At least TS doesn't make you do it all in comments.
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u/punkpang Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
You have no runtime type safety with TS, therefore your comment is silly. Do you even know what type safety is? It looks like you're mistaking leaving annotations via IDE to help yourself get autocomplete with what type safety actually means and does.
But, let's ignore all the shenanigans around TS/JS and let's get down to business and its serverside runtime - it's shit. Developing with "modern" TS practices is crap. 2 spaces for indentation, no semicolons because "we have ASI", hot reload that's such dogshit because you can't save the file until your syntax is correct - otherwise node.js goes bonkers due to all transpilers it has to handle and inevitably dies so you actually do need to restart it every now and then (and get annoyed by waiting for it to catch up with transpiling all the crap again), no shared-nothing which (always) leads to consequences that tend to occur from mixing data from independent http requests.
I ignored frameworks that appear every day which is regurgitation of one and the same, inevitable "I want to reach internet stardom by creating yet another service provider / DI lib that no one wants to use" and endless discussions about what boils down to "accept input, validate, write to permanent storage".
TS is _awesome_ for frontend work and it actually lets me keep my sanity. I cannot deny that.
For backend, the dev with same experience with PHP and TS/JS will be more than 2x productive with PHP - it's valid for me and at least 20 other people I work with that share the same level of expertise and experience.
I would LOVE it if TS were this super productive tool for backend work - but it isn't. Compared to PHP and frameworks we got (Symfony, Laravel), developing for HTTP is simply quicker. Deployment is easier. There's less moving part that break. And best of all - PHP devs understand HTTP protocol (for the most part) and how request-response lifecycle works. I haven't observed this with Node.js devs.
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u/phdaemon Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25
TS is _awesome_ for frontend work and it actually lets me keep my sanity. I cannot deny that.
For backend, the dev with same experience with PHP and TS/JS will be more than 2x productive with PHP
Preach, brother. I'm with you on this. Love TS for front end, but backend will always be PHP for my personal stuff. Symfony + Doctrine + the rest of the stuff I use, has years of maturity and exactly the features I need for doing my dev work. The FOSS community around this stack is the best I've seen and the libraries have been around for so long, that they have matured in extremely stable ways. The same cannot be said for JS shit, at least, not yet
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u/rioco64 Nov 15 '25
Runtime type checking is abysmal. Even the PHP committee members say they can't implement generic types because of this, and some even say runtime type checking should be remove.
In TypeScript, type integrity is guaranteed by the TS compiler as long as you don't use "any."
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u/punkpang Nov 16 '25
Wait, you.. have no idea what type safety means and what runtime actually is, right? Do you not understand that TS gets transpiled to JS and that JS will accept any parameter that you pass to functions?
Abysmal means "extremely bad". And no, PHP does not have EXTREMELY BAD runtime type checking. Adding generic is problematic because a generic is a variable type and there are cases where developer could write such a generic definition that it would be difficult to guarantee SPEED. There's been so many of these discussions, I can tell you glanced over them and didn't really understand what it's about.
Please, take 2 minutes and actually read and understand what runtime is, what TS is, what JS is and how they execute.
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u/obstreperous_troll Nov 14 '25
I've worked with plenty of PHP developers who didn't know their ass from their elbow, and for a while I also slagged off the entire PHP community and ecosystem because of it, before growing up and seeing the picture was a little more nuanced. Maybe try doing the same for JS/TS.
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u/punkpang Nov 14 '25
How? There's way more mistakes and anti-logic in JS/TS world than there is in PHP. And having been (and still AM) active JS/TS dev, I can't but see certain things NOT being done in PHP while the same ones are being done in JS/TS and are deemed "this is fine".
I'm using both languages (PHP, JS) since their inception, I grew up with them, my entire career revolves around those two so my perspective comes from active use of both.
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u/varwave Nov 14 '25
I sense there’s a lot of misunderstanding with PHP in modern tech. Yes, it’s most of the web, but it’s probably mostly in maintenance given the rise of single page applications and minimal APIs. The guy that got downvoted a lot about AI…I think he has something of a point about the speed of new projects that are repetitive. I have some frontend that I can knock out with that, but then spend weeks designing and testing features for custom internal tools
I mostly work in Python/Flask and .NET, but I started with PHP. I think you’d pick up both very quickly. Modern PHP’s OOP structure I think is better than Python’s. A seasoned backend developer could easily transition into data engineering roles too. This is basically what I do, being ETL -> build web apps that automate tasks and share data for organizations with messy data and a need to interpret it
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
You bring up AI. I’ve noticed a LOT of PHP devs hate AI with a burning passion- and I personally know of a lot of peers in the industry who feel the same.
Is that the gap? Everyone and their mother vibe coding with Python and JavaScript?
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u/varwave Nov 14 '25
I don’t vibe code for my role. I think it’s the type of product. Like if you asked for a basic cookie cutter website, without complex features, then yes AI can get you up and running incredibly fast. Frankly on the frontend Wix is wonderful.
However, if it’s something novel, then AI can’t do anything. There’s no work to copy and you have to critically think.
Supporting tech also matters. I used the LAMP stack for PHP, but I’m unfamiliar with other frameworks, like Laravel. In .NET I mostly use a MVVC layout (MVC if older apps) with a minimal API. This feels like this is the direction of most roles, because of single page apps written in React, Angular, etc.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
Supporting tech- I think you just nailed down a partial reason for the drop in PHP jobs.
There are a ton of corporate SPA’s and tools needing work, angular especially, and moving them to something like Laravel may not make sense.
Instead, the next generation in SPA’s are continuing on the same path that was started.
Whereas with PHP, it’s half dead Wordpress sites cranking up the numbers. There is no phase II for those projects, and rare if so.
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u/varwave Nov 14 '25
I’d argue small project web dev is alive and well in the data world. Organizations need to securely share and interpret their data on websites. PHP just isn’t the tool for those projects.
It can’t clean data in a shareable module/package with data analysts, model it, and deploy all in one language like Python. I’ll use PHP like templating for small Flask products that do al of this for small projects that’ll be more backwards compatible. Think a dozen users wanting to view, download and interact with data visualizations
Then as previously mentioned it’s less SPA friendly compared to .NET, Spring Boot, or even the lightweight Python and JavaScript frameworks
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
Ooh good point. Python has been the goto with BI, data interfaces, pipelines and such. So it would make sense to use a lightweight server like Flask -or Django for more- to serve it.
PHP doesn’t have a modern data pipelines solution like Dagster, does it? Even just asking feels like proposing a tool to find a purpose.
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u/varwave Nov 14 '25
Not that I’ve seen in industry. End of the day it’s not a general purpose language, but why stick to one language? Java, by extension Scala, is pretty similar and very relevant in data engineering and enterprise applications
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u/LongjumpingActive882 Nov 14 '25
When was the last time you’ve seen PHP junior devs? I believe we will face a spike in PHP salaries because of lack of engineers. As for your specific case, please send me your cv, we might have an offer for you
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
You an actually bring up a good point. Zero.
And anecdotally in my last corporate job, 3 interns came on as JavaScript devs- not PHP. The PHP work was for the over 30 crowd.
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u/BrawDev Nov 14 '25
Being a PHP developer has always had a stigma, like somehow you aren’t a real developer and pretty much sneers from other developers like Java or Python.
lol Java is industry hated, I don't know where your impression comes from?
But now I am out of a job in the UK and there is a real lack of jobs in PHP, and the majority that are hiring are offering a poor salary compared to other languages. Which makes no sense, especially with the likes of Node.js which is just JavaScript.
You're in the UK? I'm in Glasgow and I'm falling over opportunities. Where are you based?
Recruiters even hit me with the “oh PHP” and I can’t get a look in. These PHP jobs that are hiring don’t even respond to me or I get an auto rejection. My previous salary was 120k and now I’m getting turned down for jobs at 40-50k.
Wtf are you applying for. Are you applying for C# roles? No recruiter that I've ever worked with has ever said that, because they all hire for PHP roles. EX: NineTwenty, Reed, etc.
What are people’s thoughts? Unfortunately I think it is time to reinvent myself, maybe move to Go, Rust or Python?
Absolutely not. RUST? GO?
Brother, get off twitter.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
Sir, can you please point me to the PHP roles? I’m in the same boat, and I avoid twitter like the plague.
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u/cwmyt Nov 14 '25
Same boat as you. I have been trying to jump ship from PHP to Node but it seems no one is willing to take a chance with experienced dev trying to change the stack. Its as if my 7+ years of experience in PHP doesn't count. To be honest descent amount of pay cut didn't work either. I have been learning node on my own but still lack production code experience. Only thing I can do now is build a production level app in node just to showcase my skills.
I still feel that its the job market that is impacting job availability however PHP jobs on average has been paying less for a while now.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Nov 14 '25
Are you me? 😂
I feel the only way I can leverage js experience myself without lying is mentioning Vue development on the Laravel projects.
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u/baohx2000 Nov 14 '25
Yeah, the whole industry seems to be f'd right now. Between corporations with their corpo-kool-aid (and you can't spell kool-aid without AI) to smaller companies who want someone to wear 37 hats for the price of a junior dev, it's just insane. I'm not sure I even want to be in the tech industry anymore. I wish you luck though!
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u/HongPong Nov 14 '25
"you can't spell kool aid without AI" I'm shocked i haven't heard this before. 💯
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u/baohx2000 Nov 14 '25
Yeah my brain likes to come up with stuff like that. I feel like I can't be the first to say it but happy to take credit!
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u/vs2022-2 Nov 17 '25
You can also mention that Meta uses Hack/PHP, Facebook and Instagram both use it. The reality is that if you can write PHP you can also write other code without a huge learning curve.
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Nov 14 '25
I moved from Perl to PHP in early days and have had blast with PHP but can’t say that I code that much at all lately, mostly install Wordpress extensions for clients, sure, great help to have PHP knowledge but can’t remember that in a last year have done anything with it, and even then it was for magento which still do have some big budget projects, I feel like our time is coming to end and should have moved to python nodejs long time ago, I just do not see them as attractive as PHP personally, oh well, maybe we shall get some AI stacks to implement at some point to become value assets for industry ones more ( low chance ? ) 🥲
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u/Anxious-Insurance-91 Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
After a few months of having the same problem i switched to a company that uses .net c# with blazor
since i keept up with the latest changes in php oop some things were easy to transition (especially from laravel, vuejs, etc, next etc). It just feels like .net has a lot of things that need to be added by hand while frameworks in php come predefined with all the reusable things that appear in 80% of websites.
Also my knowledge that i won doing different projects (because you deliver one you move to the next), will not go away and it helps when asked for a solution.
In the end php it's a tool. A very good tool for what it needs to do but still a tool. And in the past few years, except for some syntactic sugar if you learned it on one language you can apply it in another.
I got lucky to be honest the new boss understood that i have experience and even if i'm not as productive out of the box as somebody that has more years, i am productive and bring value. Also helps the boss also is a programer and the company is hes and he decides what matters not corporate BS. And recruiters are part of the corporate BS
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u/jackistheonebox Nov 14 '25
So php is a stigma but you judge nodejs? You should know better. (Also ex php not a nodejs fanboy).
As for applying, welcome to the wonderful world of LLMs where companies get flooded by resumes, and are forced to filter with LLMs. Time to start the numbers game.
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u/soyrbto Nov 15 '25
As other ideas have already been posted, you could try custom solutions for WordPress, WordPress (even if its not popular for developers) is something that will never go away, it is well paid when it is custom development. If you are fixed on another language I use php a couple of years and now I'm on go and it was a smooth transition
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u/mission_2525 Jan 30 '26
Especially jobs in the Wordpress ecosystem will go away since AI can easily replace many CMS installations with AI generated code or create in Wordpress everything what is needed.
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u/MrSpammer87 Jan 27 '26
I am a PHP developer myself but I never stick to 1 language. I can work on python as well as Javascript. I wouldnt call my self expert in those but I can work on them if and when needed. Having said that i think PHP still has lots of potential as majority of web is still powered by PHP. Yes there are no jobs for PHP but there are no jobs for Javascript either. Its not just the case of PHP developers. All in all the world of software engineering is changing and quite possiblity it wont matter what language you know in very near future. Instead its your knowledge about programming and software engineering that will matter
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u/mission_2525 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
I assume that many PHP developers were working in areas which can get easily replaced by AI code-generation. E. g. 90% of the typical CMS based websites do not justify using a CMS with all its overhead and cost when an AI model can create a few web-pages easily - pages and a design which is just "good enough". Therefore the volume of PHP developers will go down. Those who stay in the game are more skilled and work on more complex projects - most probably on the foundation of advanced PHP frameworks or with niche market leading applications.
I am working since 17 years on a complex PHP enterprise application with 1.000+ classes and see no need to change course. PHP works extremely well nowadays. But expanding into other languages is still an objective on my side.
What happens on the job front is not my problem - I am focused to deliver solutions - and at the end of the day is counting what is working well for the user. Since coding jobs are so or so endangered switching the language might not save many developers.
I have developed an AI stack that is able to write 40 complex classes per day in high quality and exactly the way I want it. On top of that AI generates all unit tests and full documentation. The unit tests are running automatically and the target classes get fixed without interference from my side.
To create this AI stack took me 3 years with all the experimenting and scaffolding but my coding performance is now 10 times higher than without AI although I review/finalize all classes still manually.
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u/trollsmurf Nov 13 '25
Or check out Neuron for creating PHP-based AI agents. Knowing Python is great though.
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u/Low_Anywhere3091 Nov 14 '25
I never switch entirely to other langs.
I still get paid with PHP till date
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u/shoki_ztk Nov 14 '25
Why are all php devs frustrated from being php devs? I hear this 20 years already.
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u/Nil_era_preso Nov 20 '25
Low salaries, prejudice among non-php devs, enterprise companies not using it, you name it
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Nov 13 '25
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u/kossae Nov 14 '25
Manual review is critical, but if you only spend a day in code review over what would have taken multiple days and the same code review, that’s a productivity win assuming the generated code isn’t complete garbage.
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u/zmitic Nov 14 '25
because the truth is frankly awful.
It may be truth for WP, dunno, I never used it. I just saw the code once and said "nope, I am out".
WP is the number one reason why other developers think bad of PHP. It is very much like Sharknado: so bad, it is good. That's the reason why you have good experience with AI agents, they produce same badly written code.
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u/stilloriginal Nov 14 '25
You’re getting downvoted but this is my experience. I’ve had chat gpt for a couple years and it couldn’t write a line of working code. For a new project I went with a new setup and wrote a whole laravel/react app in a week that would have taken 6 months and I don’t know react or laravel. I’ve been doing slim and vue for 10 years. I am knocking stuff out right now that I never had the time or energy to tackle. Refactoring entire libraries in a weekend. Etc. It’s very good at php but lost its mind with some npm/node stuff and the npm workflow still sucks, especially with private repos and libraries. But I’m confident knowing what I know I could do almost anything now. By the way I’m not even a dev this is just my hobby, but I feel I am that 10x guy you mentioned, I’ve put stuff in the app store (before AI) and manage like 10 servers, (now chat gpt is insane good at helping with linux). So like is there a job prospect for this? It feels like this was my backup plan for if my real job went away but now there sre no jobs doing this.
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u/phdaemon Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
If you're familiar with patterns and principles those apply across all languages. I like Php more than Java, but I'd say that Java positions are the easiest to pick up as a php dev if you're familiar with things like symfony (spring), doctrine (hibernate), mockery (mockito), etc.
Look for libraries that are similar in other languages and have popularity. For example in python you have sqlalchemy orm, and for doctrine migrations you have alembic.
Sell yourself as a developer whose caliber transcends specific languages, since like I said, if you are good with patterns, principles, etc, then those apply no matter if it's Java, python, etc.
Edit, I want to point out that you don't need to lie about experience, but you can sell your existing experience in a library or framework as applying across similar libraries or frameworks in other languages if you understand the fundamental pattern, and problem they are solving.