Future of PHP in 2020 - Should you learn PHP in 2020?

Is PHP dead?, Is there any future of PHP as a programming language in 2020? 

This discussion is taking boom at a number of technical blogs and stack overflow and if you are also thinking about this then you are reading the right blog. In this blog, we will go through the different aspects of PHP and see if it is really worth to learn PHP in 2020.

Evolution of new programming languages are growing at a very higher number of rate, every month we are watching a new programming language come out in the market and this makes us think at least once, Is the future of PHP secure. There are modern emerging frameworks that are out in the market like Node, Django, Ruby on Rails that are performing very well in the market and this gives us the feeling of insecurity regarding PHP and our head is stuck around so many questions like should I learn PHP, is it the right choice for me?

So looking at this controversial issue, approximately 80% of the website hosted on the internet are powered by PHP which is a very huge number. Popular companies and CMS like Facebook, Wikipedia, WordPress are using PHP. Many popular frameworks like Laravel and Codeignitor are built on PHP.

Now let's discuss the point that will show you why the future of PHP is highly secured.

1) Easy to learn 

You will like the way PHP is implemented especially if you are a fresher or just started your career in this field, you are going to have fun learning with PHP as all the syntaxes are straightforward. It is quite easy to integrate your PHP projects as well if your working in a group of people.

2) Growth of the language 

Every new version of PHP coming in the market is fulfilled with lots of improvements like low memory, command and interaction, and a lot more. This makes PHP very reliable. Every new version that PHP brings to the market is highly improved in different aspects like memory, command, and interaction.

3) Adjustment to environment

No matter what the operating system you are using either it is Mac OS, Windows, Linux, or UNIX.

PHP is your friend at every operating system, so you have to be happy that the flavor of the operating system you want PHP is going to work at that. In simple words, PHP is user-friendly on any of the operating systems you would use for development.

4) Community Support

In my opinion, a great language is not all about the fact that it's easy to learn or its improvement. In fact, a great language is one that has a community that is supporting the language, and if I talk about PHP you can find a great community out there that is sitting out there on YouTube and Facebook groups that will help you solve your problems in PHP. Moreover, many developers have created third-party libraries for you that you can use them in your application to make your application lighter, faster, and more advanced. 

Now let's discuss the use cases of PHP:

Many of us have a question, What type of application can I develop with PHP.

Let me take an example for you, if I have to create a mobile application then I don't think I am going to use PHP for it. I will use JavaScript or Java for that purpose as they are the best-suited programming language for mobile applications. Similarly, if I have to create a data science project then I will use Python or R for that purpose, and if I have to create a website then I will use PHP. 

Now some of you might have a question in your mind that there are many organizations that are investing highly in modern frameworks like Node and Django, so why should I learn PHP. 

Now that doesn't mean that PHP is dead, maybe you don't like it and maybe I don't like it but this is not going to change the fact that 80% of websites on the Internet are built on PHP, this means that there are lots of jobs in PHP and the job hunting is a bit easier for you.

Some of you might still have a question that should we learn PHP in 2020, then I would suggest you go ahead and learn it as there is nothing wrong with it. It's perfectly fine especially if you are looking for a career as a freelancer then I would highly recommend you to learn it as you are going to hear a lot about PHP.

Let's discuss the ideal path of learning PHP:

I'm sure many of you would have a question in mind thinking about how to start learning PHP.

First, learn the basics of HTML/CSS and create 2-3 websites for the practice, and as per the current trend make the website responsive. 

After that learn the basics of PHP, learn all the basic syntaxes of PHP. Play around with the language.

After that, learn MySQL to make your site dynamic to implement your business logic, then go for a framework which is written in PHP. Some of the best frameworks are Laravel or CodeIgnitor, you can directly dig into it.

By learning PHP, switching to other technologies is going to become a bit easier for you. Talking about my personal experiences I've worked on a number of technologies like Django, and Node and I too started my career with PHP and frankly speaking it's not taken me so much of the efforts to learn a new technology since 70% of my basic concepts are cleared due to PHP. So by learning the basics of PHP, it is automatically going to become easier for you to switch on to a modern framework.

So in this blog, you got to know about the future of PHP in the coming years, so now don't waste your time just go and learn PHP and achieve your goals. If you liked the blog, make sure to comment below your thoughts on PHP. 

Thank you for reading the blog. 😊