PHP 25th Anniversary: ​​See what the big guys say about PHP

In 1995, Rasmus Lerdorf developed the PHP programming language. In the coming year 2020, PHP will be used for 25 years. We asked five PHP experts, Marcel Normann, Sebastian Bergmann, Arne Blankerts, Ralf Eggert and Sebastian Feldmann, what roles PHP still plays today. Most importantly, we want to know their vision for the future of programming languages.

The PHP programming language was released in 1995 and thus celebrates 25 years in 2020. This time, we asked five PHP experts and speakers at the 2019 International PHP Conference what role PHP still plays today. If you believe the numerous statistics, PHP is on the decline - but our experts disagree.

The first part of our expert examination involves the programming language PHP and its upcoming 25th birthday in 2020. We will explore the question of what role PHP still plays for our experts today. We also want to know what they think about programming languages.​

25 years of PHP: Developments

Developers: By 2020, the PHP programming language will be 25 years old. When did you first come into contact with PHP, and how does it serve you today?

Marcel Normann: In the late 90s, I was one of the last newcomers to the DotCom bubble. In 2000, I finally wanted to send a form via email without accessing an external CGImail program. At that time, the classic ASP and the new PHP4 were taken into consideration. PHP is where it becomes ASP because the hosting is quite more expensive, and also, I think it's more efficient for 500 echos per day, rather than Response.Write writes.

At the same time, I am more involved with PHP on a strategic level. It was a significant player on the web, but now it's no longer the only one.

What the experts say

Ralf Eggert: It must have been 1998, when I realized A certain Björn Schotte's mailing list on PHP. At that time, I started to mess with Perl, but it didn't feel good. PHP felt great from the start. Since then I have implemented many projects in PHP and built a small agency with six permanent employees. Plus, I even develop Alexa Skills using PHP.

Ralf Eggert is the Managing Director of Travello GmbH, has written several books on Zend Framework, and has also been named an Alexa Champion by Amazon. Ralf has been working in PHP since 1998 and enjoys sharing his experience at conferences.

Sebastian Bergmann: My first contact with PHP was in the summer of 1998. Since then I have been programming almost exclusively in PHP. I program in C from time to time to fix small bugs or add small features in PHP. PHP plays an important role for me because, as the maintainer of PHPUnit, I'm responsible for the tool that most professional PHP developers use to test their software. On the other hand, I am a consultant and trainer, helping PHP teams develop better software using PHP.

Sebastian Bergmann is an open source guy from the first hour. As the creator of the PHPUnit testing tool, he created an industry standard and made significant contributions to the professionalization of software development using PHP. As co-founder and principal consultant of PHP Consulting (www.thePHP.cc), he has helped successfully develop and operate software.

Arne Blankerts: My input is actually a change: I developed websites in the early days of the internet, not just the "dynamic" part HTML. But because the desire for server-side includes and Object Pascal such things to have meaningful perofrmance didn't result in a truly useful basis, I quickly came to PHP. In the first few months of PHP 3's life, PHP 2000, released in the early 2000s, almost completely captivated me.

Today, PHP is unlikely to be an integral part of my professional environment. As part of thePHP.cc, a little-known PHP consultancy in the community, I've shared my experience with many teams. Additionally, I'm lucky that many conferences invite me to lectures and workshops on PHP.

In this regard, PHP has a fairly high status, and I also try to emphasize this in one or another open source development.

Arne Blankerts is the co-founder of PHP Consulting Principal Consultants (www.thePHP.cc), helping companies successfully develop and operate software. He is the author and maintainer of various open source development tools and regularly speaks at professional conferences.

Possible future of PHP

Developer: Often, you have already counted your days using PHP. What are your thoughts on programming languages?

Marcel Normann: This is what I know since PHP. At the same time, there are actually valid arguments against PHP, but they are not as technical as they once were. I remain cautiously optimistic about the future of PHP: you should not underestimate the power of updating this universal language

Of course the durability of its enduring community should not be underestimated.

Marcel Normann is Head of Software Development at WhereGroup in Bonn. He has been working as a developer since 1999 and has been working with PHP for over 15 years. He spends his free time beekeeping, jogging and odd firefighting jobs instead of using a computer.

Ralf Eggert : I can count on many candidates who have been PHP killers for the past 20 years.

In the broad field of web development, PHP still has the upper hand. In statistics from W3Techs, the percentage of PHP is 79%. Candidates like Ruby or Node.js have hardly achieved anything significant.

Sebastian Bergmann: Honestly, which programming language hasn’t been counted yet? Seriously, I'm not worried about PHP.

Arne Blankerts: PHP is a programming language that has maintained a steady market share over the years and clearly still dominates the web environment. So why I have to constantly second guess what's coming to PHP, I may never understand. Even if no new projects are implemented using PHP from one day to the next, if banks and insurance companies become the benchmark for installing Cobol units, PHP will still be available for decades and will likely be actively maintained.

Otherwise, I would like to refer here to the comments from the last developer.de interview, which are just as relevant as a year ago today.

Sebastian Feldmann: To me, the discussion about the end of PHP never really made sense. As it is now, PHP is a problem-solving technology. Especially in recent years, PHP has made great progress. Version 7 is a huge leap forward for the language. While you can complain about the language's inconsistencies and legacy, PHP is still a language that solves problems easily and quickly, and that's exactly what we as software developers are meant to do.

This article is translated by php Chinese website (www.php.cn), from:

https://entwickler.de/online/php/25 -jahre-php-expertencheck-teil1-579912205.html