PHP in decline: The rise and fall of a programming language - Arudhra Innovations

-

Project Center Kumbakonam - Arudhra Innovations

PHP in decline: The rise and fall of a programming language



Once upon a time, PHP was one of the most popular programming languages. Now it’s slowly fading in popularity, especially with the rise of languages such as Python. According to the TIOBE Index for September 2019, PHP is struggling to keep its spot in the top 10 programming languages. Is it time to lower the casket, or does this language have some kick left in it?
PHP continues its ‘five year slump‘ as it slowly continues dropping down the TIOBE Index. The TIOBE Index for September 2019 shows that in the past year, PHP dropped two spots down the list, from number 7 to number 9.
As for rising languages, this month Apache Groovy comes in at spot number 11.
Compared to last year when it was at modest spot number 34, this is a large amount of growth for the language. Groovy shares some similarities with Java, making it easy for Java devs to learn and integrate with Java and third-party libraries.

Why is PHP declining in use?

When the Internet was younger, PHP was very common.  Back in 2004, it was even the TIOBE Index programming language of the year, a far cry from where it sits now on the charts.
What factors led to its fall from grace?
According to the Index:
Till the end of 2009 everything went fine, but soon after that PHP was going downhill from 10% to 5% market share in 2 years’ time. In 2014 it halved again to 2.5%. So what happened to PHP? From its start PHP was the Visual Basic for web design: easy to learn, easy to deploy, but mainly used by web designers with a limited software engineering background. The downside of PHP’s simplicity was that it was relatively easy to shoot security holes in it. PHP has been struggling with this for a long time. In 2014 PHP’s biggest supporter Facebook launched Hack as an alternative for PHP because it was not scalable. And after that, JavaScript, TypeScript and Python became the linguas franca for web development.

Rise and fall

A recent video on Reddit shared from Global App Testing shows the rise and fall of programming languages over ten years. It documents the most popular programming languages on StackOverflow since September 2008, and besides being mesmerizing to watch, it offers some insights to the ebb and flow of language usage.
More specifically, it tracks which languages received the most questions on StackOverflow.
According to the video, PHP was even higher than Java at some points in time. Like watching a close race, at times it looks like PHP will edge out and win. However, Python surges ahead around September 2016. After that, it’s all downhill.

Don’t fear the reaper

Don’t lower the casket so soon though. PHP may have taken a dip in popularity, but its community is still kicking.
Did you know this year there were PHP conferences held in Japan, Brazil, Ukraine, Germany, China, the United States, and Taiwan?
The official Twitter account for php.net currently has 67.7 thousand followers. The latest release candidate of v7.4 arrived September 5, 2019. The PHP subreddit currently has 105 thousand members, with plenty of active threads about frameworks, IDEs, and other relevant news and topics.
It’s also worth taking a look at other metrics documenting language popularity and usage. A recent IEEE Spectrum report ranked PHP at spot number 13. It’s in good company, just above Assembly and just under HTML/CSS.
If you’re still worried about PHP’s health, here’s some good news. The RedMonk Programming Language Ranking for June 2019 places the language in 4th place.
This ranking system uses the amount of GitHub repositories for its sources. So, maybe PHP programmers are asking fewer questions on StackOverflow, but they sure are programming.
Plus, have you seen its mascot? This language is too cute to go extinct.

https://www.facebook.com/arudhrainnovations/
https://twitter.com/arudhrait
https://www.instagram.com/arudhra_innovations/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WIDE REACH Scrap Processors - RK Scrap Buyers Chennai

-
Image
WIDE REACH Scrap Processors - RK Scrap Buyers Chennai Although the power of the five largest scrap companies is impressive, the next several largest companies still deals in scrap volumes that make them major players in the overall scrap arena. On the Pacific Coast, Schnitzer Steel Products Co. , Portland, Ore., has become a major processor and exporter and of ferrous scrap, while the steelmaking portions of its parent company (Schnitzer Steel Industries Inc.) are major consumers of ferrous scrap . Large shredder yards in Portland, Oakland and Tacoma, Wash., are where much of the ferrous scrap processing takes place. Some of this scrap is exported to Asian destinations, while some is prepared for domestic mills, including the company’s Cascade Rolling Mills division, which makes steel rod, wire and rebar. Some of the company’s scrap operations are joint ventures with Hugo Neu Corp. that extend the company’s reach into the eastern half of the U.S. A recent company effo...
Read more

IELTS in Detail

-
Which organisations accept IELTS scores? Choosing IELTS gives you more options for the future. IELTS is accepted by more than 10,000 organisations in over 145 countries.  ECS IELTS  This includes: ·          Universities, schools, training colleges and tertiary institutes ·          Government departments and agencies ·          Professional and industry bodies ·          Companies and employers. What IELTS score do you need? Universities, colleges, employers and migration bodies each set their own IELTS score requirements, depending on the level of English they require for their purposes.   That's why the score you are asked to demonstrate for entry to high school is different from the score you are asked to demonstrate for professional registration.  It's always best to confirm the ...
Read more

Arudhra Innovations - Thrifty textbook shopping & Other Apps - Project Center in Kumbakonam

-
Image
 Thrifty textbook shopping -  Project Center in Kumbakonam Buying textbooks hits your bank account hard at the beginning of the year. Don't even think about how little you'll get when you return them. Fortunately, your schedule usually tells you what books you'll need. (Pro tip: If you wait to purchase your books, you might luck out on the first day and your professor will say you don't need to buy it.) If you do have to buy textbooks, exhaust all options before shelling out campus bookstore prices. Check out the book section on Chegg. You can rent or buy physical copies or e-books of the book you need for a fraction of the cost you'd pay on campus. Just make sure it's the right edition of the book. You can also sell old textbooks on Chegg and it has free shipping. Depending on what you're looking for, you might have luck on eBay if you search for "college textbooks." Amazon also offers textbooks for sale or rent -- it's a bit mor...
Read more