The PHP programming language, most commonly used for web development, has fallen down one of the lists of popular languages, but its supporters insist that it continues to evolve and adapt.
PHP once ranked third on Tiobe's index of the most popular coding languages, said Paul Jansen, CEO of Tiobe Software, but in April 2024 it fell to 17th in its ranking, marking its lowest position ever. date.
Part of the reason, Jansen said, is that since the days when PHP was booming, several competitors have entered the market, such as web development frameworks like Rails, Django and React, powered by languages like Ruby, Python and JavaScript. .
“As a result, PHP had to reinvent itself,” he said. “Today PHP still has a strong presence in the field of small and medium-sized websites, and is the language behind the most popular web content management system, WordPress. So, PHP certainly isn't gone, but its glory days seem to be over.”
Is the PHP programming language still popular?
PHP is a general-purpose programming language that is well suited to web development. It arrived in 1995 but continues to improve. PHP 8.3, for example, was released in November of last year.
The programming language could rise back up the rankings relatively quickly. It was ranked seventh on Tiobe's list in January of this year, and monthly fluctuations in rankings may not be very significant considering how long it takes to learn a language and develop projects.
speaking to ITProRoman Pronskiy, CEO of The PHP Foundation, said that while a lot of attention is paid to a variety of popular languages today, PHP remains a top contender for several reasons, especially in terms of its versatility.
“It's not as sexy as AI,” he said. “At the same time, it's fascinating to discover how many interesting things are built with PHP.”
Pronskiy said PHP has traditionally focused on frameworks and CMS rather than the language itself, and noted growing interest in Laravel, Symfony and WordPress.
“I would like to be able to show at least a small fraction of the interesting projects and businesses created with PHP,” adding: “The amazing thing for companies is that the cost of running those projects is ridiculously low.”
Pronskiy said PHP has carved out a distinct niche for itself and “continues to evolve to adapt to market changes and demands.”
“The initiatives of the PHP Foundation and various subcommunities are proof of this,” he said. “Therefore, rather than seeing changes in the market as a concern, the PHP community is embracing change, innovation and healthy competition to secure PHP's place in the programming world.”
Tiobe's list is just one of several measures of programming language popularity, and the relative popularity of individual coding languages can vary considerably between these rankings.
For example, according to StackOverflow's 2023 developer survey, PHP remains the 10th most popular language among professional developers.
Similarly, PHP is the 11th most used coding language according to research from JetBrains, although its usage has declined in recent years, according to the survey.
Developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk recently ranked PHP at number four on its list, and the language has been at number two or three on that ranking since 2012.
Regardless of fluctuations in popularity, PHP is still very popular for creating websites. According to data from Cloudflare, more than half (54.7%) of websites are built in PHP, while another data source puts it at 76%.
