Should I learn PHP in 2022 or in 2023?

PHP has been there in the industry for a long time despite the large choices of languages used in the industry. Talking in terms of startups it is still the most popular programming language as it is easy to learn. For many people who are striving to make their career in the field of blogging, it is their first programming language as with the help of WordPress they can easily make their website up and running within a few minutes.

Introduction about PHP

In this part of the blog, we will dive into some of the basic overviews of PHP so that you can understand the history and some of the things which can be done with the help of PHP.

• It is a very popular open-source scripting language.
• PHP was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf and around the year 2000, it became very famous because of its simplicity.
• PHP gets executed on the server directly.
• Can be used for making very simple as well as very complex websites.
• One interesting part about PHP is Facebook uses PHP as one of the backend languages.

Time Required to Learn PHP

There are a ton of things to learn with PHP. If you are thinking to learn PHP then learning PHP alone won’t help, you need to learn one or more frameworks (like Codeigniter, Laravel, etc) with one or more databases like MySql. If you are learning core PHP then it should take you 2-3 weeks time to grasp the basic concepts of PHP and make a simple crud application. This time frame can differ from person to person as learning a programming language depends upon a lot of factors like the no of hours you give each day to learn, your determination, and hard work.

But remember one thing following up blogs, text-based content through books and video courses won’t help you as these all techniques give you just knowledge. You need to both learn and implement the things in your favorite editor for a better understanding of a specific topic. Apart from that, you should also focus on building some hobby projects like a simple crud application, login form with validations, etc to get better hands-on practice. So, for becoming an intermediate PHP developer it will take you a lot of time.

Percentage of Websites in the World using PHP

In terms of dominance PHP is definitely a king. According to a recent survey by W3 Techs, PHP is used by 78.1% of all websites. This means that 9 out of 10 websites on the internet are using PHP as their backend language.

We also need to know one thing the dominance of PHP is declining over the years. Earlier in the year 2021, the dominance of PHP was 79.6% but now it is 78.1%.

However, the dominance of PHP is going down but you will be very shocked to hear that 34% of all the websites on the web are made using WordPress. Other than that you might have heard about MediaWiki(Wikipedia software), Drupal and Joomla they are all made using PHP.

You might be worried by seeing the dominance of PHP going down but PHP will never get wiped out. According to our understanding PHP will never be wiped out because of many factors like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.

The stable version as of now is PHP 8.1.2 and it was released on 26th November 2020. In this version, they have improved, optimized, and added some of the powerful features like Preloading and JIT ( Just in Time Compilation).

Pros of Learning PHP 👍

• Easy to learn: PHP is a very easy language to learn. One can easily learn it by following the W3schools website and PHP Tutorials for Beginners playlist on our youtube channel.
• Cost-efficient in terms of Development: The cost for developing and shipping a PHP-based project is very low.
• Huge community support: If you are stuck somewhere while developing your project then you can take help from communities and forums like Stackoverflow, Reddit etc.
• Easy to Update: As per our observation upgrading from one PHP version to another version is not tough. If you face any problem then you can take the help of a tutorial online.
• Integration can be done easily: Integration of third-party API is very easy as there are tons of websites available online which provide you with libraries, helpers, and other patches for you.
• Low entry barrier : As we all know learning PHP is quite easy so anyone can build simple web pages by just learning it. That is a reason why a lot of PHP developers are there in the market.

Cons of Learning PHP 👎

• As PHP has a very low entry barrier, the pay scale for a PHP developer is quite low.
• In today’s era PHP is considered to be a very insecure and entry-level language.
• Other languages like Java, Javascript have taken over PHP as they are being adopted by a lot of good MNC’s. Apart from that Java and Javascript developers are paid quite a good amount in terms of salary as compared to PHP.

Jobs in PHP

There are a lot of PHP jobs in the market. But there is a huge competition of people applying for the jobs and getting a job in this huge pool becomes very difficult.

So now you might have a question about what is the pay scale for a junior PHP developer? It is very difficult to answer this question as it depends on your skillset, country, etc. This question can be solved with the help of a quick google search so do your own research on google and you will be able to find the answer. But in general, I can say that it is low and it is because of the cons which have been discussed above.

Final Thoughts 

Now it boils down to just one question. Should I learn PHP in 2022 or in 2023? Actually, it all depends on a lot of factors. It cannot be said straightforward as it is quite difficult to answer. But one can easily say that PHP is declining and is not a good option for some of the categories of people. So here is some of my final thought about PHP:

If you are in college: If you are studying in college then you can try PHP for some time as it is very easy to learn and create projects. You can easily create small websites and boost your confidence. But don’t stick with PHP for a long time until and unless you love coding in PHP. Move to other programming languages like Java or Javascript which has a huge demand in the market.

Already Graduated: If you are already graduated then don’t waste your time learning PHP instead go for Javascript or Python and you will be in a good position in terms of both experience and payscale.

Conclusion

There is no definite path or conclusion on this topic. This totally depends on what category you fall in and what you want to become in the future. But one thing is for sure that PHP is dead and in my opinion, it suits only entry-level developers. The exciting part about PHP is still a lot of small-scale startups are still using PHP as their backend stack and they are fulfilling their needs using it.

If you love working with PHP then you can surely choose to go with PHP and make your career out of it. If you are reading this article till the end then please drop in the comments your thoughts on PHP and are you going to learn PHP in 2022 or not.