Do you still use PHP?

I use Ruby on Rails. The productivity is just unbeatable. I can build complex things very quickly with it. The only downside is that it costs more than other options to scale. I also like Elixir/Phoenix for performance and concurrency, but it's not quite there yet in terms of productivity compared to Rails, so for now I am sticking with Rails.

I use JavaScript because it’s what I know the best and because I can use it across the entire stack. Almost anything can be done with it. I can make backend, frontend, native apps and so on.

However, JavaScript is objectively not as productive as Ruby/Rails or PHP/Laravel for Indie Hacking. But for me it strikes the perfect balance. Sometimes I hate it but most of the time I feel great about choosing JavaScript as my “home turf”.

You know best if you are able to solve your problems with PHP. It is a fantastic choice for so many things. You should feel great about using it. Cheers!

I used PHP for years before transitioning to Ruby (and now dabbling in Go).

But end of the day, use whatever works for you and that you can be productive in. I recently had to use Laravel for a small project and was surprised how nice it was compared to raw PHP that I used to use before. Use whatever works. Don't be distracted by the latest shiny thing.

PHP uses a stateless processing model. This means the interpreter runs only on a request and therefor might have to do a bit more than in other processing models. PHP and its frameworks have come a long way (OPcache and the JIT in PHP8 helps), but if you want to move tasks outside of the request scope things get ugly - fast. PHP has stuck to the idea of server pages - for better or worse.

There is still a lot of PHP out there and does the job for many, but I would be very reluctant to invest time or money to bring it willfully into a current tech stack.

I started as a PHP developer, even a contributor to Laravel, but I got bored with PHP and switched to Node/JavaScript in 2015.

PHP is still fantastic and don't let what other people are using deter you from using it.

It's entirely based on what your building.

But, generally, PHP has proven itself as a language: it has a huge active community, many frameworks and libraries and is actively pushing major performance and security releases at the core.

I'm a JavaScript junkie, I code most of my projects with MongoDB, Node/Express, and React. I initially started with these because I didn't want to spend a lot of time learning multiple languages just to make a full-stack application. Now they've stuck and I actually love the open ended, scalable, async environment that React and Node have to offer.

I've also picked up Python for machine learning extensions of my APIs, and obviously Python is famous for its computational powers and supporting libraries

Yes. The way PHP works is thought is great, but PHP isn't. There are many bad things in PHP were I just wonder how anyone would think this is a good idea to implement in a programming language.

For me If it's just a simple website I use PHP otherwise I use Nodejs.

The reason why, Nodejs is a complete webserver, you have complete control over your code, unlike PHP which is simple scripts executed by an external webserver, you are a little bit limited on that side.

As a simple example you can't make realtime applications with PHP alone as every script is executed on its own scope, there is no one shared place for all requests, I don't know if you get the idea.

But eventhough PHP is still amazing you can do alot of stuff if well used.

I use PHP for all of my projects and at my job I use Node, they use Node at work purely because of hype & companies love hype (especially big ones) so don't get caught up in it. I find Node to still be slow when developing because of setting up/using the tooling; but use what you feel comfortable with.

I use PHP for userTrack.net because it is still the easiest and cheapest platform to host. Most developers and non-technical people are used to WordPress, cPanel and shared hostings that run on the LAMP stack.

For my own projects I usually go with Node.js, but I love PHP because there is no compilation step (interpreted language), I can always edit files, publish them and the live site updates instantly.

I see many developers working with Node.JS / Go / Python

I do think there are still more PHP devs than all of those 3 alternatives combined, as there is a lot of legacy code that has to be maintained or new applications created for existing PHP ecosystems.

I'm still using PHP with blazing fast Comet: https://github.com/gotzmann/comet

Cant wait for PHP8 with JIT and all that great new features :)

Yes and I use Laravel which is great for getting an app running quickly!

(Plain) PHP is my favorite language, but recently I'm addicted to Node.JS + socket.io.
Anything you can do in PHP you can also do in Node.js.

PHP is my go-to for any new project. SplitWit is written entirely in PHP. I also support a lot of websites that run on WordPress.

I find this quite funny since I just posted about my startup's tech stack which runs entirely on Laravel (the PHP web framework of choice). The main reason I went with it? Cause it's proven, fast and I can iterate very quickly. Link to my article: https://www.valcanbuild.tech/a-bootstrappers-tech-stack/

Laravel on my own projects and WP on agency sites. What I learned on and super knowledgeable after 10+ years :)

Absolutely!
I want to give Nest.js a try, but that's more because I really like Typescript, not that I dislike PHP or have any problems with it.

Yes I still use PHP in web building

Sometimes the best language is the one you know.

What kind of development do you do with php? Are you building on WordPress? Do you have a need to do something that you can't solve with php?

I have been working for a long time with php/laravel/symfony so my opinion might be biased towards php, however it all boils down to what are you familiar with and what are the expectations of your application. I worked on projects with node, go, python, php and if somebody came to me today and asked what tech stack they should use for their next web project I would suggest php with laravel because it would be the quickest way from first commit to deployed application and because this is what I know the best. Laravel has fundamentally transformed the ecosystem of php with this "batteries included" framework approach - they provide you with almost everything that you will need to develop web based applications and this can drastically reduce the time that you need to spend developing things.

However, if you want to do something more complex stuff that needs speed, some kind of big data processing, image manipulation, distributed microservices, etc Go would be better choice because it is compiled language with very efficient concurrency model.

With that being said, you should choose between node/python/php/ruby by trying all of them and sticking with the one you like the most, as you won't notice a big difference in speed among these languages.

P.S. Programming language is just a tool that helps you achieve something. Some languages do some things better than others as they were designed for specific tasks.

go for example compiles to machine level binaries, making it considerably more efficient than php or ruby if you need pure CPU performance as well as has native multi processing..
Node.Js has the advantage of learning one language instead of two for front and back end part, at least in theory.
go is a bit young in terms of it's ecosystem and core components...
some people like typed statically compiled more and some like scripting dynamically types...

For simple projects it probably doesn't matter much... give it to 4 developers each with their preferred language, the results would all be comparable.
There are more non-developer, simple website builders in php, which sometimes makes things confusing as they can hack and patch some things together but lack basic programming understanding... I think it's more common in php due to the popularity of wordpress basically, but it's just a BS story.

The advice here of just using what you know and like the best to achieve the end goal you want is the best advice anyone can give on this subject.

There are snobs out there that think you should use X language because of Y but they all seem to forget one vital point.

End users do not care what language you use, only what you produce with it. Focus on building a good experience for your users, regardless of what tech you need to use to get there.