Why Do World Leading Corporations Still Hire PHP Developers?

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) programming language has been one of the most highly needed and popular programming languages since its creation date, 1994. So, what is the secret of the longevity of PHP in the international ICLT industry? Why does PHP never die? Why were the world’s leading websites developed in PHP programming language, and why did they include it in their main tech stack ever since? Why do an increasing number of businesses hire dedicated PHP programmers and Laravel developers? Will PHP development stay so popular in the upcoming years as well?

Legends have been circulating about this programming language for decades, and people still long for answers. Let's start from the beginning.

●  Encrypting sensitive user data. 

Thanks to these incredible opportunities, many companies from different industries hire dedicated PHP programmers. 

According to W3Techs, 78.9% of all websites use PHP with a known server-side programming language. So, it turns out, about 8 out of 10 websites use PHP in one way or another. In other words, PHP is so extremely popular on the Internet that even if it dies now, the support of all those big websites developed in PHP will ensure its long-time work and influence.

SimilarTech statistics distinguish the following countries where PHP has tremendous popularity.

● Laravel,

● Symfony,

● Zend,

● Yii,

● CodeIgniter. 

Thus, it is natural that many business owners who require new PHP software solutions stumble upon the tough decision of choosing the appropriate PHP framework. All these frameworks are open-source and do not require any licensing fees. Some of these PHP frameworks fall into the full-stack web frameworks category, while others are micro-frameworks. Most of them follow the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern that separates data manipulation from its presentation. 

The MVC process is simple. The Model stores the business logic and application data to the View (the presentation layer). The User interacts with the View and can input instructions via the Controller. The Controller gives these commands to the Model, and the cycle continues. In short, the Model is about data, the View is about appearance, and the Controller is about behavior.

Laravel: The Most Popular and Demanded PHP Framework

Laravel (launched in 2011) has become the most popular PHP framework because it can securely handle complex applications and facilitate rapid application development. It has an expressive and elegant syntax. It simplifies and accelerates similar tasks of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, coaching. It has clean architecture and is composer-friendly.

These advantages of Laravel push business owners or company leaders to hire Laravel developers for their complex projects. At CodeRiders, we lean on these advantages and strive to provide the most qualified dedicated Laravel programmers.

Some of our successful Laravel projects include:

Product: Real Estate Application (Online platform for franchisors and franchisees)

Tech stack: Laravel 5.8 for back-end, Vue.js for front-end

Country: Denmark 

Product: Online platform for landlords and tenants

Tech stack: Laravel 5.8 for back-end, Vue.js for front-end

Country: The South African Republic 

Product: PHP-based web application development for a marketing company

Tech stack: Vue.js 2.6 for front-end, Laravel 5.8 for back-end

Country: China 

Check out the complete descriptions of these projects in an interview with our senior software developer Albert Ispiryan, and check our portfolio section for client reviews. 

• PHP is viral as long as there are websites
• PHP has low development costs

PHP has been around since 1994, and it has created its own identity. As it is an open-source server-side programming language, you can reduce the development costs marginally during the PHP development process.

However, the PHP development prices also vary significantly based on specific countries. For example, in Canada, according to Talent.com, the yearly salary of an average PHP developer lies between $80.000 - $100.000. In Australia, the annual salary for a PHP web developer varies between $90.000 to $110.000. We have similar numbers in European countries and USA, while in Armenia, you can hire dedicated PHP programmers with the same skill-set with a $30-$50 hourly rate. Check out more details about PHP web developer rates.

• PHP is secure
• PHP has a big community

Due to its long history and popularity, PHP has developed a strong community throughout the years. The number of PHP developers is significantly high. Almost 50% of inquiries we receive are about towards the ubiquitous PHP.

Famous Websites Developed in PHP / Use PHP 

Facebook

The world’s widely used social media platform, Facebook (Meta), is among the top websites developed in PHP. Its initial programming language was PHP, written in 2004 by its founders, Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskowitz. Since its foundation, Facebook has been relying on one of the advantages of PHP, which is generating dynamic content in mere seconds. So, most of the application code on Facebook uses PHP. 

At Facebook, the usage of PHP has been unchanged throughout its long history and enlargement. 2.895 billion monthly active users of Facebook and 1.3 billion monthly active users of Facebook messenger encourage and inspire a variety of modern companies to use PHP for their primary application code.

In general, the Facebook platform is a combination of APIs that make the app more social. This repository contains the open-source PHP SDK that accesses your Facebook account from the PHP app.

Facebook business SDK also uses PHP. That is a toolkit bundling business-focused APIs into one SDK, including Business Manager, Marketing, Pages, and the Instagram Graph API. Facebook business SDK allows managing campaigns for pages and accounts, marketing activities to prompt your business, such as ads creation and spreading, adding products, insights, permission controls, and more.  PHP programming language supports all this.

In 2010, Facebook also introduced HipHop for PHP (HPHPc). This compiler translates the source code into the source code of another language. 

• Sidebar.php
• Header.php
• Comments.php, etc.
• Each of these files connects to the similarly named area on the front end of your site:

Such as sidebar.php dictates how your sidebar area looks and functions, header.php dictates how your header looks and functions, while comments.php will dictate how your comments section will look and function.

The Future of PHP

PHP has come a long way from its roots as a template parsing system that would run C functions as it encountered tags. PHP is far away from being a dead language. The latest version of PHP (8.0) offers full object-oriented capabilities, an opt-in strict typing system, JIT compiler, database extensions, robust data, time processing tools, and more.

These improvements and capabilities prove that PHP is up to thriving. PHP will be in-demand in the future to continue powering CMSs (content management systems), e-commerce, CRMs (customer relationship management systems), source management systems, ERP systems (enterprise resource planning systems), and more.

APIs feeding mobile applications and business communication will still rely on PHP.

The new features in PHP 8 will help increase employee productivity, decrease maintenance, and improve performance (JIT). JIT compiler has the potential of providing inroads into system programming and machine learning.

We expect the PHP ecosystem to diversify much more in the future. There will be gaining traction for testing tools and automation. Companies will increase the usage of containers to deploy applications.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, PHP is a programming language with history and rich expertise. It has seen significant ups and downs, and yet, it is still much competitive in the ICT industry. PHP backs up leading social platforms and open-source software solutions, recording magnificent successes.

International business owners and leaders still hire dedicated PHP programmers and rely on PHP development. PHP is here to stay!