Why do programmers advise new programmers to ignore learning PHP?
There seems to be a lot of hate for PHP in the programmer's community.
“PHP is horrible,” they say. “PHP is not well designed,” they say. “PHP function names suck,” they say.
And you know what? They are right.
PHP was not designed at all! It was developed as a set of tools to the help the guy solve his web problems, that’s why it was later called PHP - Personal Home Page before it became the PHP we know today.
PHP is a language that provides quick and direct solutions to web problems.
Look at what Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP, has to say about this:
PHP filled the server-side Web app void in the late 90s and early 2000s when Java and JS were catching up.
If your goal is to make interactive web pages, then PHP may satisfy your needs.
Some people might argue that certain aspects of PHP are not as mature as those in other languages.
They spend their time “evangelizing” on social networks instead of actually working to solve customers problems. They look at fashion, instead of just picking the right tool for the right task.
PHP, in its simplest form, encourages many bad practices, the most obvious is mixing model (SQL) and view code (HTML).
In the end, it is up to the programmer to write good or bad code. You can write awful code in Java or C#. At the same time, you can write good code in PHP.
The fact is, something like 20–40% of the internet (at least) runs on PHP or even more, the last W3Techs research shows that PHP is used by 83.4% of all the websites whose server-side.
Usage statistics and market share of PHP for websites
There are a lot of legacy projects that can be addressed as Version 5 is used by 84.4% of all the websites who use PHP.
More importantly, billions of dollars in value are built on top of PHP.
That means many billions of dollars are spent building and maintaining PHP code. Ignoring that opportunity can be extremely shortsighted and stupid
Now, money isn’t everything and PHP isn’t always the highest paid skillset. But, for beginning programmers or people wanting to pick up freelance work, PHP is a great tool to have in your programmer's tool belt.
Programmers who advise others to ignore PHP either don’t know the language well enough to write good code in it, they are purists who want PHP to become a clone of Java or C# or whatever, they have bad programming style and want to pin it on the language, or they just simply "chit-chat".
“PHP is horrible,” they say. “PHP is not well designed,” they say. “PHP function names suck,” they say.
And you know what? They are right.
PHP was not designed at all! It was developed as a set of tools to the help the guy solve his web problems, that’s why it was later called PHP - Personal Home Page before it became the PHP we know today.
PHP is a language that provides quick and direct solutions to web problems.
Look at what Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP, has to say about this:
People like PHP because it solves their Web problem. As such, I don’t see any weaknesses. It does the job it was designed to do.
PHP filled the server-side Web app void in the late 90s and early 2000s when Java and JS were catching up.
If your goal is to make interactive web pages, then PHP may satisfy your needs.
Some people might argue that certain aspects of PHP are not as mature as those in other languages.
They spend their time “evangelizing” on social networks instead of actually working to solve customers problems. They look at fashion, instead of just picking the right tool for the right task.
Common pitfalls
PHP is quite a good language to learn for beginners. As a result of that, there’s a very high chance that they would follow bad practices and PHP will have to take the blame for that as well.PHP, in its simplest form, encourages many bad practices, the most obvious is mixing model (SQL) and view code (HTML).
In the end, it is up to the programmer to write good or bad code. You can write awful code in Java or C#. At the same time, you can write good code in PHP.
Are there PHP jobs?
A lot! Will never pay much, since there will always be amateurs stepping on your toes - you’ll be compared with even if you write 10x better code.The fact is, something like 20–40% of the internet (at least) runs on PHP or even more, the last W3Techs research shows that PHP is used by 83.4% of all the websites whose server-side.
Usage statistics and market share of PHP for websites
There are a lot of legacy projects that can be addressed as Version 5 is used by 84.4% of all the websites who use PHP.
Money talks
There are millions and millions of websites built on WordPress, PHPbb, vBulletin, Magento, Drupal, and other extremely popular software packages.More importantly, billions of dollars in value are built on top of PHP.
That means many billions of dollars are spent building and maintaining PHP code. Ignoring that opportunity can be extremely shortsighted and stupid
Now, money isn’t everything and PHP isn’t always the highest paid skillset. But, for beginning programmers or people wanting to pick up freelance work, PHP is a great tool to have in your programmer's tool belt.
Bottom Line
I'm not a PHP fan precisely, in fact as many other programmers today, I’d go with JavaScript now since you can use it on the client, on the backend (Node JS), on your database (MongoDB) on your middleware... you name it.Programmers who advise others to ignore PHP either don’t know the language well enough to write good code in it, they are purists who want PHP to become a clone of Java or C# or whatever, they have bad programming style and want to pin it on the language, or they just simply "chit-chat".
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