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Wappalyzer stats indicate PHP has a 82% marketshare in 2018

PHP is the language both loved and hated. The most popular server side programming language has never had a good reputation among many developers. There's been "a PHP killer" in the works more times as there's been "an iPhone killer".

PHP is the language both loved and hated. The most popular server side programming language has never had a good reputation among many developers. There's been "a PHP killer" in the works more times as there's been "an iPhone killer".

PHP came into existance from a very organic development process and it is own victim in some cases. You can't fix some of the warts without breaking a lot of the web. And that is where PHP continues to shine. It's a practical tool, with tradeoffs.

If you follow the trends you would expect that PHP is pretty much dead, as there are few no high ranking Hacker News articles on the new PHP hotness. Because, there's not much of it.

Web marketshare for server side languages

PHP frameworks and libraries continue evolve, new ones are introduced, and a yearly release will add new features (and some cleanup) to the language.

But according to statistics from Wappalyzer*, the language continues to be the most popular server side programming language by a wide margin. 82.3% of the web runs PHP, and Java is the second at 8.8%.

Others don't show the numbers released by the company. And while it's safe to say numbers like this are not exact, they are indicative. PHP will likely have reached it peak as a multitude of options are now available on the market. Still, even in 2018 it is safe to say one thing: PHP is not dead

* Wappalyzer collects data using a browser extension. It uses fingerprinting to create statistics of all requests made by the site, including third party tracking scripts and so fort.

Written by Jorgé on Wednesday May 9, 2018

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