PHP is dying. Is it true?

PHP’s future has been one of the most actual topics in recent years. 

New languages appear regularly and immediately attract attention with a number of advantages. For example, Golang has impressive coroutine. Java allows for creating a full-fledged ecosystem. Python is great for computing and artificial intelligence.

Let’s see, what advantages PHP has and what is new in PHP development, frameworks, and Packagist.

PHP development in 2019

PHP is a constantly evolving programming language, which gets a new version almost every year (for example, 7.3 version was released in 2018, and 7.4 was delivered in November 2019). Version 7.0 reconstructs the core of PHP and the new Zend Engine highly increases its productivity. The last version boosts performance and improves code readability. For example, it allows for using a more concise syntax and building more readable and maintainable code.

The New 7.4 PHP version contributes to the improvement of performance, which is achieved in different ways. One of the most anticipated features is preloading. Preloading helps out with increasing the speed of script execution and simplifies common lines of code, which gives the opportunity to have faster, clearer, and more user-friendly code.

The 7.4 PHP version makes it possible to use spread operator in array expressions, remove the array merge, add first-class property type declarations and type hinting; but the 8.0 PHP version expected on September 2021 will be the real milestone for PHP performance.

PHP frameworks

PHP has well-known frameworks — Laravel and Yii — and also a new one, Swoft.

Laravel is a PHP open-source framework for creating web applications with considerable syntaxes. It has a great tool collection to create architectures of applications. Also, Laravel includes different features of ASP.NET MVC, CodeIgniter, Ruby on Rails and other technologies. It helps developers facilitate website development and also create a basic level of web application security.

Yii is a PHP multipurpose web application framework. It can be used for different difficult applications, such as forums, portals, ecommerce projects, content management systems (CMS), etc. Yii is characterized by its component-based architecture and sophisticated caching support.

Swoft is a PHP microservice coroutine framework for building high-performance web applications, middleware, and basic services, in many ways similar to Golang (Go). It is located in memory despite the traditional PHP FastCGI Process Manager. Swoft has a built-in coroutine web server and common coroutine client.

Packagist

Packagist is a PHP Package Repository. It helps out with installing code in a fast and reliable way. Lately, the quantity of PHP packages has increased along with the growth of its ecosystem. For example, there are more than 220,000 packages and over 14 billion installs to date.

As we see, PHP does not stand still; it develops and improves. PHP suits web applications with different levels of complexity and is not going to give up in 2020. For more info, read a detailed overview of PHP frameworks in 2019-2020.