A longtime main programming language for internet improvement courting again to 1995, PHP has misplaced the highlight to languages resembling Python and JavaScript lately. Nonetheless, a PHP specialist at PHP software program vendor Perforce Zend is stressing the continued significance of the language.
“Is PHP nonetheless related in 2026? Brief reply: Sure, and it exhibits no indicators of going anyplace,” stated Matthew Weier O’Phinney, principal product supervisor at Perforce Zend and OpenLogic, in a January 15 weblog put up. O’Phinney developed internet functions on the PHP-based Zend Framework even earlier than its public launch and led the Zend open-source venture from 2009 to 2019. PHP, he stated, has been the silent workhorse of the trendy internet for greater than three many years. “In reality, many customers are interacting with PHP each day with out realizing it,” he stated, citing PHP utilization within the Drupal and WordPress content material administration programs. Frameworks resembling Laravel and Symfony additionally use Zend, he added. “From private blogs to advanced enterprise programs, PHP’s utilization stays widespread, whilst newer applied sciences emerge and develop,” O’Phinney stated.
“Whereas it’s true that PHP utilization has declined barely lately, it stays the preferred alternative for server-side languages by a large margin,” O’Phinney confused. And with developments in PHP 8.x, efficiency isn’t a bottleneck for PHP internet functions, he stated. The JIT (simply in time) compiler and enhancements to the Zend Engine make sure that PHP handles high-concurrency requests effectively, he added. This previous November noticed the discharge of PHP 8.5, that includes an extension for securely parsing URIs and URLs. PHP additionally has confirmed itself extremely adaptable to cloud-native and containerized deployment, O’Phinney added. “The language simply integrates with containerization instruments like Docker, empowering groups to construct light-weight, remoted PHP environments which are constant throughout improvement, testing, and manufacturing levels.”
