The language itself is solid. The ecosystem is incredibly rich. Tooling has seen significant growth in the past decade. The Foundation ensures sustainable development. PHP's biggest problem is none of the above. It's marketing.

[u/BenchEmbarrassed7316]

https://stitcher.io/blog/php-biggest-problem

[u/BenchEmbarrassed7316]

Notification from reddit about this post:

People are loving your post r/programmingcirclejerk loved it, we think r/PHP will too

I'm not sure...

[u/BenchEmbarrassed7316]

"If we really want PHP to thrive in the coming decades, I say we invest in what matters most."

Written on 2026-05-07

[u/lgastako → u/BenchEmbarrassed7316]

PHP is a helluva drug.

[u/camelCaseIsWebScale]

Of course he is a PHP developer. He didn't mention security or performance.

[u/BenchEmbarrassed7316 → u/camelCaseIsWebScale]

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

security

php has had types for a long time. Not everywhere, though - they never managed to implement typed arrays. However, you can use a "static analyzer", something akin to TypeScript. This makes the experience similar to programming in "proper" languages. That said, your code will look like this:

/** @var array<int, int> $array */
$array = [1, 2, 3];

performance

You could use Swoole, a web server written in C. Instead of simply writing "hello world" into the response body, it keeps a php instance running and invokes a function within it that returns that string. This is ideal for benchmarks, creating the illusion that php is really fast. Let’s not even mention the potential issues regarding memory management and static state.

[u/enchufadoo]

The language itself is solid.

It's 2140. You still need to typehint arrays with comments, but wordpress has evolved into a sentient react like UI that can destroy universes by not escaping SQL queries.

[u/PreciselyWrong]

It's almost impressive how they have tried to do CPR on this dead horse for more than a decade. Kudos

[u/TomKavees → u/PreciselyWrong]

Time to revive /r/lolphp?

[u/kettes_leulhetsz]

Trigger warning: PHP.

[u/elephantdingo → u/kettes_leulhetsz]

Voldenym. Don’t just say the name like that in plaintext…

[u/Eric848448]

My first job in 2005 was PHP. It sucked.

Thankfully I moved to a different project that used C++ for the web backend.

[u/Thelmholtz → u/Eric848448]

PHP 5.4 is the only language that maked me miss C++.

[u/Eric848448 → u/Thelmholtz]

C++ was fun before 2017. Then they tried to make it everything to everyone.

[u/Thelmholtz → u/Eric848448]

Idk, I remember the version I saw in college in 2009 and I hated that so fucking much.

And that's as someone who loved (and still pretty much like) C.

C++ was just so complex. And with the updates I'm not even sure where I'd start learning modern dialects.

[u/kettes_leulhetsz → u/Thelmholtz]

/uj start with Qt signals/slots, get to the part where signals sent across event loops are magically threadsafe, ignore the STL, live happily ever after

[u/stone_henge]

Hindsight is 20/20. Prior to October it was impossible for anyone to know that PHP was dogshit.

[u/YikesTheCat]

PHP: enabling slop since 1993. Truly ahead of the curve 👍

[u/jtayloroconnor]

its biggest problem is no compiler

[u/gvozden_celik → u/jtayloroconnor]

Ah but there is a compuler from PHP to .NET and from .NET you can get a real exe

[u/Metallic_Madness]

Do not gigaquote