How PHP Will Fare In 2017?

For the PHP community, the best news in 2016 was the release of version 7.1. While many initially saw PHP 7.1 as a minor release with bug fixes, it

proved to be a whole different beast altogether. The version offered important improvements, a new return type (void) and

Multi Catch Exception Handling.

This year, We went to the PHP community and asked about the general feelings and expectations about the trends that would dominate

the PHP world in 2017.

➜ What was the best thing that happened to PHP in 2016?

➜ What does the community thinks of PHP 7 and 7.1?

➜ What is the best PHP framework?

We asked three questions in the Reddit thread

➜ In addition, We asked about the community’s response on the issue of official termination of support for PHP 5.6.

➜ In addition to the Reddit, We also posted these questions via email to several community influencers. I received the following responses:

About FrameworkDepends on what is the definition of “the best”. If we’re talking about “most popular in US” then it should be Laravel. If it’s “most popular in ex-USSR and asia” then it’s Yii. If we’re talking about enterprise level support, that’s Symfony without any doubt.

Cal Evans, Technical Manager at Zend Technologies and godfather of the PHP community responded:

About PHP 7 & 7.1While 7.0 was excellent revolutionary release, there was design issue with return types and returning null preventing me from using it. 7.1 added nullable types and now I’m happy.

About FrameworkThere is a best fit for every use case. Symfony, Laravel, Zend Framework, Yii, Expressive, Silex, Slim, the list is endless, and each of the frameworks has a place.

Stefan Koopmanschap, cofounder of PHPBenelux loved PHP 7+.

About PHP 7 & 7.1I love it. I think it is a great step in the development of the language, PHP is a seriously mature language now, which can easily compete with other languages. And it’s being used for highly scalable and business-critical applications.

We ran a poll on Reddit and got some excellent answers from PHP experts, all over the world. I will now offer a summary of the answers to all four questions, so that the readers could form their own opinions

What Was the Best Thing That Happened to PHP in 2016?

PHP is fast as h*ll!

➜ The improvements in speed is the main benefit of PHP 7 (introduced near the end of 2015).

➜ For some users, the best thing about 2016 was the increased maturity of PHP libraries and frameworks. I think Reddit user ajr901 put it best in the comment:

Speed, ease of development (sort of?), ease of deployment, arguably

better frameworks and tooling available for PHP.

What Does the Community Thinks About PHP 7 and 7.1?

➜ The community loves the new PHP 7. The improvements in almost all areas of the language come together in a very fast package that removes one of the major complaints about PHP.

➜ Many respondents felt that PHP is now ready for enterprise level projects because of the speed of PHP 7.

What Does the Community Thinks About PHP 7 and 7.1?

PHP has always been used by millions, but

the largest companies have avoided it because speed matters so much at that level. With PHP 7+, we may have more household names using

PHP.

it’s a major step into the right direction,

type hinting will hopefully silence some

haters

The real meat of the discussion (and this is true for every PHP related discussion!) was about the framework preferred by the users. Everyone has their own favorite framework that they use in their projects. In response to the question about the best PHP framework, everyone opted for their own favorite.

We asked the community to select their favorite from Symfony, Yii2 and Laravel. Interestingly, some Reddit commentators also brought in Codeigniter and their own custom PHP frameworks into the debate.

So, What Is the Best PHP Framework?

Laravel is the smoothest coding I’ve

ever had. Yii is fight-the-

system every step of the way.

Overwhelmly, the comments favored Laravel among the three, with

Symfony coming in the second place. I think diabetesjones summed up the

debate:

What Will the (Probable) PHP Trends for 2017?

Probable Trends I see three major trends that would dominate the PHP world in the year 2017.

The first and the most probable trend is the complete dominance of PHP 7.x in all aspects of PHP development.

The second important and related PHP trend in 2017 would be the release of major versions of all important frameworks. Right now, the

bulk of all major frameworks (Symfony, Laravel and Yii) is built on older versions of PHP.

Finally, major (and minor) web hosting providers of all flavors would upgrade to PHP 7.x. While this is a no-brainer, given the popularity of PHP7.x, anyone who has ever used a web  host knows how difficult it

is to get the web hosting company to upgrade anything!

The PHP community is very optimistic about PHP 7+ and all the

possibilities the new versions offer for

projects of all descriptions and scale.

Conclusion

Thanks!