The tech industry is a lot of things, but slow and static isn’t one of them. Our world is constantly changing and evolving, and guess what? So are programming languages. Every other day we hear a new framework, a new superset, or a new disruptive language that’s here to kill your favorite stack. JavaScript is dead, PHP is dead, and Python is on its way to the grave. Not even Nietzsche was so ruthless when he wrote that God had died. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: programming languages are harder to kill than superheroes.
Look, languages are not living creatures. They don’t vanish from one moment to the next. They don’t stop functioning after their expiration date. As long as the hardware remains compatible, a PERL script can keep on going forever. Or Cobol, or Fortran, or Pascal. Even to this day, we have industries and applications running on these “defunct” languages. Some of them are even the backbone of important services for our society.
Now, it’s obvious that when people say that a language is “dead”, they are implying that it’s become less popular, its community has shrunk, or it has fallen behind its competitors. Take, for example, Ruby. Everyone sang praises about the language, but nowadays, it’s relatively uncommon. Its popularity and adoption were strongly tied to the popularity of Ruby on Rails.
And yes, I can still download RoR and boot up a backend solution. MVC might not be the trendiest architecture on the block, but it still works as well as it did ten years ago. And even if RoR has fallen out of favor in comparison to Django, Laravel, or NodeJS+Express, it’s still a very mature and very good framework.
If anything, the emergence of new programming languages only highlights the importance of understanding older ones. Case in point: many software developers have embraced functional programming after spending decades with object-oriented languages. By understanding our history, we become aware of our current limits. Learning a variety of programming languages allows developers to adapt more easily to new technologies and trends as they emerge.
Overall, it’s critical to avoid dismissing older or less well-known programming languages like PHP as obsolete or antiquated. Compared to more modern languages, they still have value and might offer new insights that we might otherwise miss. It is in our best interests as developers to avoid believing myths and speculations about the foretold death of programming languages.
My Personal Story
For most of my team’s career, we’ve been working with either Django or Flask—both very old-school but solid frameworks for building backend applications in Python. We’ve also dabbled quite a bit in FastAPI and CherryPy. We’ve also worked with Typescript, Javascript, and Go, but it’s pretty obvious that Python is our jam.
We are also very competitive and like challenges, which is why when a new project fell on our laps, and someone said, “Why don’t we try Deno?”, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Before going any further, I want to leave something very clear. Deno is a fantastic work of art that fixes some of the most obnoxious issues with NodeJS. It’s fast, it’s TypeScript first, and it’s probably the best JS runtime environment in terms of performance. But it’s young, and it opens a huge can of worms.
Let’s do an experiment. Go to your favorite AI model and ask it to write a full tutorial on how to set up and serve a Deno backend solution. If you are lucky, you’ll get some accurate information circa 2021, but what if you want to use some NPM packages? After all, Deno released their NPM compatibility update in 2023. Well, tough luck. Even if the AI had been trained on more recent information, it’s far more likely that it will hallucinate a solution for Deno than for other well-established solutions.
The reason why is the crux of the issue—models are more accurate the more data we feed them. In contrast to Deno, Express and Laravel have a thousand-fold more content available on the web. The older and more popular the tech, the higher the odds that someone has already solved a problem in StackOverflow.
Take for example, Elixir and Rust. In 2022, both languages overtook all other alternatives as the most loved technology in the StackOverflow survey. But, that’s only one side of the story.
The sum of the total developers that voted for both Elixir and Rust totals 8,153 respondents. That’s 2,664 less than all the people who voted that they loved Java, 4,450 less than C#, and 14,846 less than those who voted Python.
I have nothing against either Elixir or Rust—quite the opposite, actually—but their respective communities are an order of magnitude smaller than their competitors. While I’m not a believer in majority opinion, the massive adoption of other technologies means that there are more interactions in the community, more creative problem-solving, and more information.
In other words, yes, modern solutions solve problems, are performant, and in most cases are probably an objectively better technology than their ancestors (trust me, we’ll get to that in a minute), but they are also an unexplored territory. While that may sound enticing for people who like a challenge, it means that you have to be ready to sit down and code your own solutions for edge cases.
In other words, don’t get involved with the new framework, language, or tech stack if you are not willing to get your hands dirty.
So, as you might have suspected, that’s exactly what happened in our experience with Deno. On its own, it got us 80% of the way, but the lack of popular, common, and well-maintained packages was certainly felt. The more we worked, the more we had to delve deep into the documentation and the source code to build our own solutions.
Was it worth the effort? You bet. The end result is fantastic, and it was a true learning experience for everyone involved. But the journey there was tough, and it could have been a lot easier if we had just decided to stick to what’s out there.
The Rise and Fall of Programming Languages
Have you ever heard someone say “PHP is dead” and felt a pang of sadness in your developer heart? (Or maybe a warm feeling and a sense of hope?) Well, for better or worse, I’m here to tell you that PHP is not dead.
Here’s the thing: programming languages, like Hollywood stars, rise and fall all the time. At one point in time, Java was all the rage, and everyone wanted to learn it. It seemed like every tech company out there was hiring Java developers left and right! But then something changed—developers started gravitating toward other languages with more modern features like Python or JavaScript.
But why do some languages seem to fade away while others thrive for decades? Well, it’s kind of complicated, actually. Sometimes it comes down to how well a language can adapt to changing technology trends. Can it integrate easily with mobile apps or work well in cloud-based environments? If not, its popularity could start waning over time.
Kotlin was specifically designed to make Android development less atrocious, and in tandem with C# and the ASP.net ecosystem, brought down Java’s market share by a fair margin. Even so, don’t expect banks to let go of Java anytime soon.
This brings us to another point: sometimes, languages are popular because there are no alternatives. I know that JavaScript has grown to become quite the robust language, but let’s be honest; it wouldn’t be as popular as it is if it weren’t for the fact that it is the de facto solution for DOM manipulation.
And, so, with Blazor and the aforementioned ASP.net ecosystem, we are seeing a lot of developers migrating over to C# now that WebAssembly is a thing. It’s not going to dethrone JavaScript, but it’s certainly going to make things more interesting in the near future.
Finally, sometimes languages grow in popularity because their accessibility makes people expand on their functionality for everything. Python and JavaScript are great examples, but they are interpreted and rather slow languages, but that hasn’t stopped enthusiasts from using it for computational intense tasks such as 3-D graphics and game engines.
Other times, it has everything to do with community uproar. Just take Perl 6, for example—I think we can all agree there were folks who weren’t happy about that change! The truth is: coding language preferences will differ between regions due to factors such as education systems, which also determines companies choice when choosing software direction.
So yeah, even if a language seems outdated right now or no longer receives support from its creators, who knows—maybe by next week they’ll be back at the top again. Ruby might be forgotten nowadays, but who knows if another Ruby on Rails is just around the corner.
The Impact of Industry Trends on Programming Language
Back when I was just starting out, PHP was already well-established. Everyone was using it for web development, and every company that wanted an online presence needed someone who knew PHP. Then came along those pesky Javascript frameworks like AngularJS and ReactJS, which promised faster development times and better user interfaces. Suddenly everyone was hopping on that bandwagon.
At first glance, it looked like PHP would go down with the ship just like good ol’ Jack Dawson from Titanic (sorry if you haven’t seen the movie but surely you’ve heard of it). However, what many people fail to realize is that programming languages don’t die easily—they adapt. And boy, did PHP adapt!
It kept up with trends by incorporating useful features such as object-oriented programming (OOP), which made code more organized and streamlined functionality across projects. Another factor contributing to its longevity is its massive community support system. The number of libraries available for PHP is mind-boggling! Just imagine having access to thousands upon thousands of tools at your fingertips! That sure beats combing through documentation for hours trying to figure out how something works.
And finally, there’s one thing no trendy framework can compete with: experience. Yes, my dear friends—knowing something intimately inside-out has its perks as well! Programmers worldwide have written millions of lines of code in PHP over decades while honing their skills daily. This collective know-how has led to a treasure trove of solutions, debugging techniques, and approaches—this vast resource can often prove invaluable when tackling new projects.
The Role of Community in Keeping Programming Languages Alive
No language is an island. It takes a whole squad of developers and enthusiasts to keep a language alive and thriving. Without them, that language might as well be six feet under with Elvis. But what do we mean by “community”? Well, it’s all those folks out there who use the same language as you do—whether it’s PHP or Python or Ruby on Rails—and are dedicated to helping each other learn more about coding and improving their skills.
Now here’s where things get interesting: communities aren’t just important for keeping languages alive today but also for making sure they’re still around tomorrow. Think of a community like a garden (stay with me here). If people stop tending the garden—pulling weeds, fertilizing soil—eventually nothing will grow at all!
In fact, I have this one buddy who was learning PHP back in college (he’d probably kill me if he knew I was telling y’all this story!). He struggled through his first few projects alone until he found online forums full of fellow PHP-ers who were always ready to lend advice or tips on how to improve his code.
That kind of support system can make ALL the difference between someone sticking with a particular language or throwing their hands up in frustration (believe me—I’ve been there!). So let’s raise our glasses (or coffee cups) high in honor of all those amazing communities out there that nurture the growth of our favorite programming languages! May they never die out like old fads from yesteryear!
The Importance of Legacy Code: Why Old Languages Still Matter
Now, I know what you’re thinking—Legacy code? Pfff, that’s like Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian tablets, why bother? But hear me out, because legacy code is actually quite important.
Think about it like this: when a house has been standing for decades or even centuries, there’s a certain charm to it. Sure, the plumbing and electrical might need updating, but there’s something special about living in a piece of history. It’s the same with programming languages. Just because they’ve been around for a while doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant.
In fact, many older languages are still being used today and have proven themselves to be incredibly resilient over time. Take PHP, for example: despite rumors of its demise over the years (thanks primarily to its reputation as being easy but not very scalable), it remains one of the most popular web development languages on the planet.
And here’s another thing: older codebases can actually teach us a lot about how our industry has evolved over time. By digging through these ancient lines of code (or maybe just old projects gathering dust), we can see where we’ve come from and just how far we’ve progressed since then.
Plus, someone always needs maintenance work done on an old system that was written 30 or 40 years ago! You’d be surprised how much business flows through systems built by incredible engineers who may have retired already!
Let me give you a very simple example: remember that language I mentioned before—Elixir? Well, it executes its code on the Erlang virtual machine, and that dates back to 1986. It’s one of the best examples of concurrency in computer science rivaling even modern solutions. See what I mean? Just because Erlang isn’t as popular as Python, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have something to offer.
So don’t dismiss those older programming languages too quickly—sometimes, they hold more value than you might think. Embrace your inner archaeologist; dig up an old software package and take a deep dive into what made it tick back in the day—grab yourself an Indiana Jones hat if you feel adventurous enough!
The Need for Diversity in Programming Languages: Why We Shouldn’t Abandon PHP
PHP Is a language that gets a lot of hate thrown at it these days. People say it’s old and outdated and that nobody uses it anymore. But here’s the thing: just because a language isn’t new and shiny doesn’t mean we should abandon it altogether. In fact, I’d argue that diversity in programming languages is more important now than ever before.
Let me explain with an anecdote. Recently, my mom wanted to spruce up her website and asked for my help. She runs a small business selling homemade crafts and relies on her website to bring in customers.
Guess what? Her site was built using none other than good ol’ PHP (not even Laravel). The company that made the webpage just stopped answering her phone calls, and all she had was the login information to the server.
Now imagine if everyone had stopped learning PHP because they thought it was dead or irrelevant. What would happen then? My mom wouldn’t have been able to find anyone to fix her website! And let me tell you, she definitely wasn’t going to learn Python or Ruby on Rails herself.
And before you ask, yes, I’m making her something nicer, but while we prep the upgrade, that website needs to be running so she can engage with her customers.
We need diversity in programming languages just like we need diversity in any other aspect of our lives—cultural backgrounds, opinions, skill sets—it all brings something unique and valuable to the table.
Plus, think about all those developers who learned PHP as their first language—are we really saying they wasted years of their life? No way! They gained valuable skills that can still be useful today! So let’s stop throwing shade at languages just because they’re not brand-spankin’-new anymore. Embrace diversity in programming languages—your mom (and mine) will thank you later!
If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out our other PHP articles.
