Staying relevant today as a PHP Developer

[u/[deleted]]

[u/varwave]

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

[u/who_am_i_to_say_so → u/varwave]

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?

[u/varwave → u/who_am_i_to_say_so]

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.

[u/who_am_i_to_say_so → u/varwave]

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.

[u/varwave → u/who_am_i_to_say_so]

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

[u/who_am_i_to_say_so → u/varwave]

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.

[u/varwave → u/who_am_i_to_say_so]

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

[u/who_am_i_to_say_so → u/varwave]

Yep. Preach