Is PHP dying? Here are stats to show that it isn’t

People have been calling PHP a deal language for over a decade now. Wanting a programming language to be dead is quite different from it actually being dead.

However, the programming realm is ever evolving with new and improved languages being introduced in the place of old redundant programming languages.

In this post we take a look at recent PHP statistics to explain why PHP is not even close to being a dead language.

So, is PHP dying?

In short, no.

PHP has been around since 1994 and has consistently been one of the best programming languages for web development. A better question to ask would be “What is the future of PHP?”.

According to research done by w3techs on the usage statistics of PHP, 79% of websites use PHP as their programming language.

This 79% does not include sites throughout the web as CMS sites are excluded from this figure. Still, 79% does not indicate a dead programming language.

According to historical trends, PHP dipped slightly from 80% to 79% from the year 2017 to 2020. While it may be premature to call this a death sentence for PHP, it may be a sign for the future.

How does PHP feel in its current state?

PHP feels better and faster than ever. Recent PHP benchmarks from Kinsta show that PHP7.X saw a huge boost in performance when compared to PHP 5.6.

This is not to say that PHP is the best of modern programming languages but still a sign that it is evolving with modern needs of performance.

Moreover, PHP also stacks well against other languages with improvements like:

● New type hinting

● Multi-catch exception handling

● More negative string offsets

● Iterable and void returns

● Combines comparison operator

Unfortunately, you will only get to experience these improvements if you are using the latest version of PHP and 69% of the websites on WordPress use PHP 7.1 or lower.

Another thing that hurts PHP’s reputation is the fact that PHP 7.1 and lower have stopped receiving security and active support.

As of 2019, there are a lot of websites that are running on a PHP version that has reached its end and that has a negative impact on PHP’s reputation.

Some of the biggest benefits of PHP

Since we have concluded that PHP is not even close to dead, many people swear by the great results that this language can produce. Let’s look at a number of benefits that it has.

PHP is readily available

One of the biggest benefits of PHP is its accessibility almost everywhere in the programming world no matter what project you are working on.

One of the examples is when you are working on a smaller project on some servers and you need a programming language. PHP is a great language in this regard as you need to integrate it with your browser and code away.

PHP has mature systems

PHP is great for companies that want to make use of mature systems that they can rely on. It has seen great improvements over the years and has matured enough to be trusted by big companies.

PHP developers are easy to find

Owing to the popularity of PHP, you can always find PHP developers. These are not just ordinary developers but developers that have matured in experience as the language matured.

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Moreover, PHP developers are in great demand as well.

On the other hand, it is difficult to find developers for newer frameworks that have an experience so PHP also shines in this regard.

PHP is easy to learn

People who are just starting to program find PHP an easy language to learn. There are tons of resources online that can help you with mastering the language.

The same can not be said for other languages or newer frameworks.

Final Words

Love it or hate it, PHP is not going to die anytime soon.

Not liking PHP does not mean it is dead. It might be losing some steam but 79% is still a huge percentage of websites that use PHP.

Maybe in 25 years we’ll see a new king of programming languages, but for now and the near future, PHP will reign supreme.