I was wondering whether PHP (And thus Laravel) has a positive future? Every year we see an increase of NodeJS applications in favor of PHP (https://www.similartech.com/compare/nodejs-vs-php) At the moment PHP is still the "big guy" for now...
It wouldn't shock me if in a couple of years NodeJS would dethrone PHP as the most used language/library for backend web development.
In my opinion PHP has to either release a new version with a performance gain of a couple of hundred percent, or it will eventually die out.
What are your thoughts about the future of PHP/Laravel?
And @JeffreyWay if in the case that PHP isn't that popular anymore, would you consider on teaching us other frameworks? F.e https://adonisjs.com/ which is a NodeJS framework who is highly inspired by Laravel?
IMHO, this is an age-old discussion that is full of opinions and generally leads to none productive outcomes. In short, again IMHO, PHP isn't going anywhere. It powers the majority of the internet source. It would shock me if in a couple of years PHP was dead. There will always be the new kid on the block but PHP has come along way from the PHP3 days and is a viable language for a multitude of different projects. Matt Stauffer recently did a talk on Laravel and the "enterprise" which you can find here.
As far as Laravel goes, Taylor is 100% dedicated to this and he has the support of an amazing community. It has a bright future and every release I am just blown away by the sheer dedication he and his team (and community!) has to bring us such an amazing free product.
So I think instead of worrying about if a language is going to die out, just code amazing stuff using the best tools you can (even if it's not PHP).
I remember when the same was said about PERL, RoR, and a myriad of other languages. PHP? Still here, getting better all the time, and just as popular as ever.
@ccarver My most favorite framework is definitely Laravel! I use it daily and I hope to use it many more years. I fully agree with you, the Laravel community is just awesome, and Taylor is a mad genius.
The only thing that concerns me is the fact that NodeJS is faster than PHP. And the difference in performance is only getting bigger and bigger.
I am convinced that for now and in the near future that PHP is going nowhere. NodeJS still lacks allot of essential stuff IMHO, f.e an ORM which is as user-friendly as Eloquent and much more.
The only thing that concerns me is the fact that NodeJS is faster than PHP
Look at php origins and understand what it has been best for.
Medium to smaller sites
Hobbiest
Now look at c++, java technology and ask where are they used mostly.
Enterprise
So NodeJS is faster than PHP?
Assembly language is thousands of time faster than NodeJS, so what.
You have to look at use case and why using. I had a smaller site in laravel for a humane society for years, a medium hit site that functioned perfect since laravel ver 4.1, I updated as time went by.
In 5 years NodeJS might be dead, who knows, live today.
This will answer your question.
https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y
Node.js still have a Long way to go to replace PHP.
Its growth is not fast enough and still, there is more Python running on servers than Node.js 0.8%
Python only 1.2% while php is 79%... of total market share.
