PHP has evolved dramatically - exploring modern PHP 8.x features, frameworks, and why it still powers 77% of the web.
PHP gets dumped on constantly, usually by people who haven't touched it since 2005. Old PHP was a mess. Inconsistent function names, weird type juggling, and WordPress code that made you question your career. But PHP 7 and 8 changed everything. Modern PHP is a different language.
PHP 8 brought a JIT compiler that speeds up CPU-intensive tasks. You get union types, so a function can accept string|int. Named arguments make function calls readable. Match expressions are like switch statements that don't suck. Enums finally exist natively. Attributes replace docblock annotations. These aren't minor improvements. They fundamentally change how you write PHP.
The type system is legitimately good now. You can declare strict types at the file level. Function parameters and return types are enforced. Nullable types use ?string syntax. Property types mean your class properties have guarantees. Static analysis tools like PHPStan and Psalm catch bugs before runtime. These types are enforced.
Laravel became the Rails of PHP. It has elegant syntax, a great ORM (Eloquent), built-in authentication, job queues, and real-time broadcasting. Symfony is more enterprise-focused with a component architecture. Both frameworks are production-ready and handle serious traffic. The days of rolling your own framework are over.
Composer solved dependency management. It's PHP's NPM or pip. The PSR standards (PHP Standard Recommendations) mean packages follow consistent conventions. PSR-4 for autoloading, PSR-12 for code style, PSR-15 for HTTP middleware. You can mix and match packages from different vendors and they work together. The ecosystem isn't as big as NPM, but the quality is higher.
Performance is better than people think. OpCache caches compiled PHP bytecode, so you're not parsing files on every request. PHP-FPM with Nginx is the standard deployment. It handles thousands of requests per second for typical web apps. PHP isn't Python-slow. Benchmarks show it's competitive with Node.js for web workloads. The JIT compiler helps with number crunching, though PHP isn't the first choice for CPU-intensive work.
The tooling ecosystem matured. PHPStan and Psalm do static analysis to catch bugs. PHP CS Fixer formats code automatically. Rector refactors code between PHP versions. PHPUnit is a solid testing framework. Xdebug provides proper debugging with breakpoints and stack traces. You're not stuck with var_dump debugging anymore.
Deployment is straightforward. PHP-FPM behind Nginx is standard. Horizontal scaling works because PHP has a shared-nothing architecture. Each request is isolated, so you can add servers without coordination. Session management goes in Redis or Memcached. Docker support is excellent.
PHP dominates cheap shared hosting. A $5/month host usually supports PHP but not Node.js or Python. For small projects or tight budgets, this matters. You can deploy a Laravel app on basic shared hosting.
The "is PHP dying" question is ridiculous. WordPress powers 40%+ of the web. Facebook started with PHP and built HHVM and Hack. Symfony and Laravel have huge communities. PHP 8.4 is in development.
PHP won't win points at tech meetups, but it's solid for web development. The language evolved. The frameworks are good. The hosting is cheap. The jobs exist. Judge it on modern PHP, not ancient WordPress code.