Why PHP In 2020?
While browsing new job listings, I have been getting a little frustrated with what seems is a decreasing amount of higher-quality PHP opportunities out there lately. I am not sure if it is just the excitement around JavaScript over the last few years, or the bad rap PHP has gotten from being around for so long. But I think jumping all-in on the JS bandwagon without careful consideration as to why exactly you are doing so could be a mistake.
I don’t want this to come off as an anti-javascript rant, because I love JavaScript and all of the amazing new stuff that has come out with it over the last few years. Vue/React, looking at you! But as a server-side language, I think PHP and its ecosystem are the way to go in 2019–2020.
There are a number of reasons I feel this way, and they have been said better by others already:
But it boils down to a few things for me essentially. Modern PHP is cleaner, easier to learn, debug and develop, while offering better or equal performance than comparable Node.js systems. As a cherry on top, add in an incredible ecosystem of libraries and tools, and an amazing community.
Although PHP is not an asynchronous language like Node is, there are several several major production-ready tools/frameworks out there right now adding async capabilities to PHP, with results equal or better to Node. The performance gains that used to be the impetus for adopting Node have all but vanished.
Swoole, ReactPHP, Amp have been out a few years now, and a new offering from the creators of Laravel, called Laravel Vapor, was recently announced at Laracon 2019 a few weeks ago. Vapor is a server-less Laravel platform based on AWS Lambda that boasted impressive benchmarks and amazing dev tooling, which will be released in the coming weeks.
While I wait for Vapor to come out, I am going to mess around with some other async PHP frameworks like Swoole and post what I learn here. Stay tuned!
