1. The State of PHP 2014
James Titcumb
Portsmouth Linux User Group
21st June 2014

2. James Titcumb
www.jamestitcumb.com
www.protected.co.uk
www.phphants.co.uk
@asgrim
Who is this guy?

3. Who are you?

4. A brief history...

5. 1994-1995 - PHP/FI 1.0
● Basic functionality
● Solved a problem
● Simpler than Perl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rasmus_Lerdorf_cropped.jpg

6. 1997 - PHP 3
● Rewrote parser
● Zend Technologies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zeev_Suraski_2005_cropped.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Andi_Gutmans_1.jpg

7. 2000 - PHP 4
● Zend Engine 1.0
● Big improvements
● Very basic “OO”

8. 2004 - PHP 5
● Zend Engine 2.0
● Better OO
● PDO
● Performance increase
● Adoption slow…

9. So… what is PHP?

10. What is PHP?
1
2
3
4

11. <?php
echo "Hello world";
From “Hello World”...

12. <?php
echo "Hello, " . $_GET['name'];
From “Hello World”...

13. … to Facebook
https://twitter.com/feross/status/459259593630433280

14. PHP powers
82%of the web
Source: http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all

15. Who uses PHP...

16. The Hate

17. ● http://phpsadness.com/
● http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
● http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/
● http://webonastick.com/php.html
● http://aurelio.audero.it/blog/2014/02/05/why-people-think-php-sucks/
● https://maurus.net/resources/programming-languages/php/
● http://www.bitstorm.org/edwin/en/php/
● https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/why-php-sucks
● http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/.../why_do_so_many_developers_hate_php/
● http://www.quora.com/.../Is-PHP-a-badly-designed-programming-language
● etc.
Some People Don’t Like PHP

18. Some reasons...

19. Some reasons...
● Was not “designed”

20. Some reasons...
● Was not “designed”
● Many inconsistencies
○ in_array($needle, $haystack)
○ strstr($haystack, $needle)
○ htmlentities() … html_entity_decode()

21. Some reasons...
● Was not “designed”
● Many inconsistencies
● Loosely typed
○ int foo = 0;
○ $foo = 0;

22. Some reasons...
● Was not “designed”
● Many inconsistencies
● Loosely typed
● Seen as “amateur”

23. Some reasons...
● Was not “designed”
● Many inconsistencies
● Loosely typed
● Seen as “amateur”
● T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

24. Some reasons...
● Was not “designed”
● Many inconsistencies
● Loosely typed
● Seen as “amateur”
● T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM
● php.internals

25. Haters gonna hate.
So…
● Use the right tool
● Use what is comfortable
● If you like using PHP, ignore the hate

26. What made PHP work?

27. ● Easy to learn
Why it works...

28. ● Easy to learn
● Loosely typed
Why it works...

29. ● Easy to learn
● Loosely typed
● Easy to install
Why it works...

30. ● Easy to learn
● Loosely typed
● Easy to install
● Rise of the CMS
Why it works...

31. ● Easy to learn
● Loosely typed
● Easy to install
● Rise of the CMS
● Gets the job done
Why it works...

32. Then it all changed...
Rob Allen: https://www.flickr.com/photos/akrabat/54795045

33. ● PHP 5.3 features
PHP keeps getting MORE awesome

34. ● PHP 5.3 features
● PHP 5.4 + 5.5 features
PHP keeps getting MORE awesome

35. ● PHP 5.3 features
● PHP 5.4 + 5.5 features
● PHP-FIG
PHP keeps getting MORE awesome

36. ● PHP 5.3 features
● PHP 5.4 + 5.5 features
● PHP-FIG
● Rise of the community
PHP keeps getting MORE awesome

37. ● PHP 5.3 features
● PHP 5.4 + 5.5 features
● PHP-FIG
● Rise of the community
● Composer
PHP keeps getting MORE awesome

38. The Future of PHP…?

39. Things to look out for...

40. ● HHVM
Things to look out for...

41. ● HHVM
● Zephir
Things to look out for...

42. ● HHVM
● Zephir
● PHPNG
Things to look out for...

43. ● HHVM
● Zephir
● PHPNG
● Growing community!
Things to look out for...

44. Unstoppable Train
http://unsplash.com/post/71169964532/download-by-kholodnitskiy-maksim

45. Questions?

46. James Titcumb
www.jamestitcumb.com
www.protected.co.uk
www.phphants.co.uk
@asgrim
Thanks for watching!