State of PHP
Zeev Suraski
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Congrats!
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PHP
How it all began
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Notable milestones
• 1998:
PHP 3 is released
PHP hits the 100K domains mark
• 1999:
PHP hits the 1M domains mark
Zend Engine developed
• 2000:
PHP 4 released
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PHP
The PHP Project, January 2000
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PHP
Things didn’t always look promising…
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Notable milestones
• 2002:
Yahoo embraces PHP
• 2004:
PHP 5 released
• 2005:
IBM, Oracle endorse PHP
• 2006:
Microsoft endorses PHP (more or less)
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PHP
The most popular Web language in existence
Web Server Popularity
Zeus Netscape
Others Apache Modules Popularity (%)
0.3%
0.5%
6% 40
35
30
25
IIS 20
20% 15
10
5
0
Apache PERL PHP PYTHON
73%
Source: http://securityspace.com/
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Large Vendors Targeting PHP User Base
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PHP Developers
Shifting Demographics
[By 2013] commercial and corporate IT developers will compose more than 3 million developers in the
community — growing from 13% to 60% of the worldwide PHP developer population.
(Source: Dec 2007, Findings – Corporate and IT Programmers Will Discover PHP's Benefits in Larger Numbers)
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What about the
competition?
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Breaching the Java Fortress
“PHP will find a home in many Java-
centric application development
organizations, which will leverage it in
scenarios where Java is overly complex or
simply overkill.”
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Kargo.com:
Replacing Java with PHP
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Guess who?
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Development Trends
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Simplicity
Making a comeback…
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PHP Is Maturing
• Frameworks
• Enterprise-grade tools
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Rich Internet Applications
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Web Services & Cloud Computing
Code reuse finally works en masse
• Opportunities: using, delivering
• Challenges: SLA, sensitive data, performance,
proven track record
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Key Takeaways
• PHP is the right choice
• Value Simplicity
… but – use tools!
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
(unless that’s your business)
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Happy PHP’ing
Feedback: zeev@zend.com
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