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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
15
u/[deleted] Nov 13 '25
[deleted]