Review: PHP Highlights 2019

2019 is coming to an end, and a lot has happened in the PHP world. Now it’s time to look back:

What are the highlights and what are the shortcomings and disappointments of PHP in 2019?

We interviewed several well-known PHP experts, and they told us what they personally thought were the biggest highlights and disappointments of PHP in 2019.

In addition, they also introduced what are the most important things in the PHP community in 2019.

What do you think is the highlight of PHP in 2019?

Ralf Geschke (software developer and PHP veteran):

First to release PHP 7.4. In addition to great innovations such as typed properties, preloading or the possibility of FFI (Foreign Function Interface), I also appreciate the Arrow function, which is a small and pleasant extension to the previous syntax. Secondly, I would like to mention a tweet where I came across the Bref project inadvertently.

With Bref, PHP becomes suitable for the "serverless" environment AWS Lambda, including PHP runtime and deployment tools. Until now, PHP has been underrepresented in the world of (web) application development, with support mostly limited to Java, Node.js, Python and possibly Go.

Most cloud providers provide SDKs for PHP, but the code only runs on classic cloud servers (such as AWS EC2). So it's still exciting.

Florian Simeth (WordPress Developer):

Not much has changed in the first few years since late 2015: Boom! PHP seems to want to reinvent itself. And although (currently) it only rewrites the most urgent things that developers have always wanted, which have always been part of the normal work for PHP: for example, the lack of type declarations, which ultimately only leads to better object-oriented code.

Thomas Eiling (PHP developer Symfony and Shopware):

PHP 7.4 release with typed properties and many other great new features and possibilities . The language is becoming more and more adult-oriented and, thanks to constant further developments, professional software development is always possible.

What is the most important thing for the PHP community?

Ralf Geschke (software developer and PHP veteran):

In 2019 I came across many articles and posts proposing questions such as Questions like “Does PHP have a future?”, “Is it still worth learning PHP?”, “Is PHP losing importance?” or even “PHP is dying soon”.

The hype of previous years has certainly ended, but that’s a good thing. Regarding the "discussions" of Perl vs. PHP, PHP vs. Java vs. Python vs. XYZ, no one wants a later framework feud.

In the best sense, PHP has grown. What was important - and still is - is ongoing development, both of the language itself and most importantly of the tools, frameworks and applications. In this case, 2019 is a good year.

The last and most important point is that according to relevant statistics, PHP's share of server-side programming languages for websites is still close to 79% and has not declined further. In this regard, the community can act with healthy self-confidence without shying away from comparisons with other languages.

Florian Simeth (WordPress Developer):

PHP is driving this development, in PHP 7.4 we now also receive classes, arrow functions and preloading typed properties. In particular, the latter will bring further performance improvements to many web applications.

What disappointments did PHP give you in 2019?

Ralf Geschke (software developer and PHP veteran):

In 2019, the founding soul of PHP, Zeev Suraski, resigned, resulting in the development of the PHP language. The "official team" Zend company is in the spotlight. This negative news has shaken the confidence of some people who don't know what's going on in PHP!

However, under the protection of the Linux Foundation, as of mid-December 2019, there is still "new version launch and new version planning!" on the official PHP website, dispelling some of people's doubts!

Florian Simeth (WordPress Developer):

For my opinion on PHP, it doesn’t disappoint at all. I think the PHP community can be very proud of this. Here you can see it again: if you work together, you can move mountains.

Thomas Eiling (PHP Developer, Symfony and Shopware):

Honestly, I was not disappointed with PHP in 2019! 2020 will be even better! Looking forward to it...

This article is translated from php Chinese website, the original English address: https://entwickler.de/online/php/php-highlights-2019-naehkaestchen-teil1-579918726 .html