PHP development had better days, for sure. But is PHP dead? If you look closely the PHP development numbers are not dead at all. PHP is the most widely used server configuration language to date. About 75 percent of all web pages are powered by PHP. It is fair to conclude that PHP development is not dead based on statistics as 75 percent is the highest number of dead languages!
One of the reasons PHP development is used by many websites is because WordPress uses PHP development. WordPress’s market share is about 34 percent of all websites. That’s 75 million websites running WordPress.
In addition, there are other CMS like Drupal (3%) and Joomla (2%) which also have a significant share in the market. There are also popular store management systems, such as Magento, which have a 1 percent market share.
1) Building Websites From scratch:
I can see the controversy over building websites from scratch as most people, who use WordPress for example, do not know how to write code. Creating a website in WordPress does not require you to know how to write code. Most people with a WordPress website are probably unaware that it is powered by PHP. So is PHP development still relevant for the people who build websites from scratch?
PHP was a popular language and still is. One of the reasons for this is that it is ‘easy to learn programming language. That makes it an excellent language for young people to build websites. PHP can be read without prior knowledge. I think it is fair to say that most long-time web developers may start with PHP development, or at least work with PHP sometime.
2) Planning:
Since PHP development has been around since 1994 the language has become a little more complex over time. There are many ways to build the same functionality and many of these methods are very good. This makes it easy to write bad code in PHP. It is possible to write bad code in any language but PHP development makes it a little easier because of the way it has grown.
PHP development has been around for a long time and has a lot of old stuff. This makes it easier to get started with PHP development, but if you stick to the old solution you end up with a low code that does not follow advanced processes. And this is something you should try to avoid. Not following the best practice is something that will happen if you are not familiar with PHP development because it is not always clear what the best solution is. This is because there are many ways to solve the same problem.
3) Jobs:
With 75% of the web powered by PHP development, there will be many functions that include some form of PHP development coding. All of these websites need maintenance and there are PHP developers needed for that. A large share of the PHP development market will not go overnight, so activities that include PHP development will be available in the future.
If you look at this Stack Overflow task category link you will find many functions that require PHP development.
Conclusion
Although there is much discussion about the future of PHP development, it is clear that PHP development has a future. It is the most widely used editing language on websites.
PHP development has been around for a long time and this is reflected in the code. There are a lot of old things which means that the best solution is not always clear. With clever coding, you can use a frame that does a lot of dirty work for you and forces you to write clean codes.
Many activities involve PHP development skills and this will remain the case shortly. If you are interested in developing PHP Websites, Coding Brains can help in providing the right developers you need. For more information, please contact us.
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