A Glimpse into The Future of PHP Engineering

PHP is one of the most prominent programming languages in the world. As of 2020, 26% of programmers in the world are using PHP. WordPress has played a pivotal role in elevating PHP to its current popularity, with over 77 million websites built using it.

WordPress is one of the easiest content management systems to deploy on the server programming language, and PHP requires the least amount of maintenance as well. This has led this combination to be one of the easiest and most popular solutions.

The 8th version of PHP was recently released with functionality improvements like the introduction to JIT and constructor property promotion. It can be said that PHP has an active and involved team behind it looking to keep the language ahead of its competitors. However other languages that are competing with PHP for space in the dynamic website market are also being employed to make iOS and Android apps as well as desktop software.

Let’s see what could be the possible future of PHP:

Web Development

The introduction of JIT with the 8th version of PHP improved its speed by 20% compared to the 7th iteration and also allowed it to handle 50% more requests per second. Though these numbers may seem modest in theory, they have made a big impact in practice.

PHP is so prolific on internet websites today that it will take time for any of the competing languages to ever surpass its market prominence.

Browser Testing and Browser Automation

The browser automation and testing market are captured by a framework called Selenium. Now you can use PHP to create selenium test cases for your websites and also automate some functionalities.

Selenium is an open-source and powerful tool for testing websites using automation. It can be used to test websites built using PHP. It allows you to verify functions like hyperlinks, integrated forms, and format adaptability.

CMS, CRM, POS, and other Management System

CMS businesses run on a very low budget, you can secure a CMS system for as low as 10 USD per month. However, many improvements can be made in the field of content management systems. Given WordPress’s success, over the years the different options have been following the same structure and offering the same functionality, slowly becoming more similar to one another. This can make choosing the right CMS confusing, if you need help selecting the right company, tell us what you need. We can do the work for you and connect you with up to 5 companies within 72h that match your need- all for free.

PHP is one of the cheapest and easiest to use programming languages and it has the potential to disrupt the content management systems (CMS) market by offering more features and looking to innovate past WordPress and all its imitators that are currently saturating the market

Image Processing and Compression

Image processing is a very demanding field, there is a constant search to save ever bigger files into smaller sizes. Websites integrate many images, even the simplest ones, ranging from logos to menu titles, blog images, product images or even display pictures. These images take a lot of space on the servers and can affect the loading speed of the websites.

This is where PHP can be used to push compression and processing to greater efficiencies while searching for opportunities for improving the user experience and increasing loading speeds. Being versatile in nature PHP can also use algorithms written in other languages as extensions for image processing.

Next Best PHP Framework

Despite the plethora of PHP frameworks already in existence, they all lack one feature or other. Every new framework looks to be the new all-encompassing framework that will become the next best thing in the industry.

Despite many frameworks being consistently updated, no one knows when a framework that mixes the most popular competitors or brings an entirely new approach will become the new industry standard.

PHP frameworks further and improve upon the performance of core PHP coding, which makes them a very useful and beneficial market for developers to explore.

Mobile App Development

Mobile App development is almost untouched by PHP despite how widespread literacy of this coding language is amongst developers.

There are frameworks like KikApp which can be used to create both Android and iOS apps using PHP and one of the best parts is that it doesn’t use any intermediary compromise like a hybrid for cross-platform mobile app development.

PHP has a lot of room for growth in the mobile industry. The fact that it is already used by the majority of websites, can facilitate the transfer of data by creating an API. This could potentially help many small and mid-sized companies with low budgets, given that they would only need someone who knows PHP to create their mobile apps as well as their websites all in one programming language.

Integration with Cybersecurity to avoid the Cyber Attacks

Cybersecurity is a critical area for any internet business. Servers are targeted by cyberattacks every single day. Since PHP is used directly on servers, it can also function as cybersecurity to prevent the most common type of attacks done through websites: DDoS and brute force.

PHP coupled with other technologies can be used to secure the front-end as well as the backend (server) of any other web application. It is an important responsibility of a developer to create a secure web application and take all possible preventive security measures.

Security is always an important concern when developing and managing a website, and it is important your developers can handle this aspect. If you need help selecting the right company, tell us what you need. We can do the work for you and connect you with up to 5 companies within 72h that match your need- all for free.

Desktop Application Development

The desktop apps development market is currently dominated by languages like Java, C/C++ and JavaScript. Like with any programming language, cross-platform development can drastically reduce development costs while expanding the project’s impact across other platforms.

The advantages of using PHP to build desktop applications include:

• The language is a good balance between easy syntax and good code structure.
• You won't have to pay for the hosting costs of the application and can normally fit it onto a USB stick.
• It allows you to make browser-based games that are playable without using low-level OS API.

There are a few players in the market working on cross-platform development using PHP, such as GTK-PHP and WX-PHP. These tools let you create executable files using PHP.

Final Words

PHP is not going anywhere in the future. There are developers claiming its obsolescence and predicting its demise, but the numbers reached in the website development market say otherwise. Another important factor in PHP’s endurance has been its compatibility with other languages that can be integrated into PHP projects through extensions and frameworks.