- Introduction
- It’s a popular language for websites
- It’s easy to learn and use
- WordPress has a large chunk of the Internet
- Laravel is an awesome PHP framework
- You can become a JavaScript developer too
- Conclusion
Introduction
PHP is a server-side language used primarily for developing websites in conjunction with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
I've been a PHP developer for over a decade and have no intention of leaving PHP even though I have an interest in other languages.
PHP is primarily used for websites and even though JavaScript seems to be the most talked about and used technology used for the web PHP still has a strong presence meaning it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
It's a popular language for websites
Why is the popularity of a programming language important? If you plan to invest time into learning PHP to program with it then popularity is a factor.
The popularity of a programming language determines the number of jobs available for that language and resources such as documentation, tutorials and PHP applications available.
At the time of writing this guide according to W3Tech PHP is used by 76.5% of all websites and is used by top companies such as Facebook, Microsoft and Wikipedia.
It's also a popular choice for start-up companies as it's considered pretty easy to get into. This is great news for PHP as it will keep it relevant for the foreseeable future.
It's easy to learn and use
I consider PHP to be one of the easiest languages to get into and use, from my personal experience I didn't start in PHP I started in Java and became interested in PHP during my university course which was primarily using Java.
What I ended up finding is I found it a lot easier to work with PHP when compared to Java. Even now after recently working with a legacy application in Java I found it too difficult to work with and debug.
The reason why it's easy to get into is it's not strict with how you can structure your PHP projects. You can create either an object-oriented application where each PHP file represents a Class or a procedural application where a PHP file can represent a function and import it into other PHP files to use.
WordPress has a large chunk of the Internet
So why does WordPress matter? Well, what it has going for it is a large market share of the Internet.
WordPress is used by 62.8% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 43.1% of all websites.
W3Techs market share statement on Wordpress
At the time of writing this article according to W3Tech, 43.1% of all websites use WordPress which is massive and when comparing the growth of WordPress in the past 10 years the market share has more than doubled as it was 21% back in 2014.
So what is WordPress? It's a content management system (CMS) that's mainly used to create blogs however other times it's evolved to be a system for other sectors such as business, e-commerce, portfolios, health and events.
Laravel is an awesome PHP framework
Over a decade ago when I began working as a web developer, PHP had a number of different PHP frameworks that were used by companies. These PHP frameworks at the time were Symfony, CakePHP, CodeIgniter and Zend.
Over the years Laravel gained popularity as companies started using it and as a result, Laravel is mentioned more with PHP developer roles advertised.
Laravel makes development simple thanks to the features it provides such as Facades, Database migrations, Eloquent ORM, and Blade templating. Not only that but the Laravel documentation on their website is easy to follow making it easy to program with.
Another big feature of Laravel are it's first party packages that are available such as Breeze, Passport, Octane etc that provide extra features to your Laravel application.
Laravel is so feature-packed that I haven't come across another framework that offers so much and it's still going strong being updated and adding new features.
You can become a JavaScript developer too
When working with PHP websites you will inevitably work with JavaScript.
This technology has come a long way from when I started, I originally learnt JavaScipt when jQuery was the big thing and most websites used jQuery as it made writing JavaScript easy.
The current trend is to program with JavaScript frameworks and a lot of PHP Developer roles now include a requirement for experience in a specific JavaScript framework.
Of course, not every single PHP developer role will include any JavaScript framework/s but in my opinion, as a developer, I would target roles that use one so you can gain experience and become eligible to be a JavaScript developer at the same time as being a PHP developer.
I previously mentioned Laravel as a popular PHP framework, what's also the case is that Laravel is used together with the Vue.js JavaScript framework making it a popular pairing.
All JavaScript frameworks also support TypeScript which is now considered the standard instead of plain old regular JavaScript.
Typescript is to put it simply an extension of JavaScript that makes everything typed. It can be difficult at first to get used to but it's something you can get used to if you already have a lot of experience in JavaScript.
Conclusion
This guide provides reasons based on my experience as a PHP developer as to why PHP is a great choice for a programming language to pursue for your career as a web developer.
It's easy to use compared with other programming languages so the learning curve is low, it's popular so you don't need to worry about the language essentially dying and no job roles being available as a result. Additionally, you have PHP systems that are widely used and loved such as Laravel and WordPress.
Even though JavaScript is the most used and popular I would still recommend switching to PHP and becoming a PHP / JavaScript developer simultaneously allowing to you cater to both types of job roles. This opens up more opportunities for you as a web developer in your career.
Hope you enjoyed my opinion piece on why you should choose PHP for web development.