PHP - A Dead Programming Language?
About two years ago, I was talking with a Senior Developer where I work. He was very skilled in .Net, and was sort of like a mentor to me. I was just getting into blogging and Wordpress, and I was wondering if I should learn PHP. I was telling this Senior Developer about my blog (which made me about $1200 in 4 months), and whether I should start learning PHP. He completely ruined the next few years for me.
PHP is Dead
Yep, he told me PHP was a dead and dying programming language. I really didn’t completely believe him, but I never did learn PHP. Instead, I went ahead and focused on learning more .Net. Mistake? Yes and No. I would love to know PHP because there are a ton of plugins and scripts that I would like to make with it. But knowing .Net is nice because I can rub it into people’s faces at work.
Back to PHP being dead, I wasn’t going to let that slide for too long. Yeah, he said PHP was a dead language. But here is something you need to realize about 95% of ASP.Net developers. They don’t know JACK about anything other than ASP.Net. My coworkers know nothing about HTML, CSS, Javascript, or anything web related other than ASP. I went to a .Net conference, went into a talk about CSS. Out of the 200 people in the room, I was the only one who raised their hand when asked who was an 8/10 when it comes to CSS. SAD.
It is my understanding that PHP is the most used programming language, especially when it comes to the web. It may not be in the business sector, but I don’t know how many times not knowing PHP was burnt me. PHP is a dead programming language? I think not …
Can’t we just put PHP to rest so I don’t think I have wasted the last 2 years?
Comments (5)
Clog Money
October 8th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
No chance in hell, how would people like me make their money. I don’t really get how some people can program in one language and not another. A friend of mine at university was much better at programming in php than me at the time, but give him java and he just got lost and confused. I’ve been programming professionally for two years now and in that time I’ve used. Java, C#, Php, ASP, Perl, Python and Bash. I think it’s just a case of not being scared to try new languages.
CubeWarrior
October 8th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
One point I will bring up though is the fact that whether or NOT a recruiter or employer agree, it is better to be VERY GOOD in one or two language, then crappy in a dozen.
I can’t tell you the number of times in the 90’s and 00’s that potential employers or recruiters would poo-poo the fact that I concentrated on and was very good at VB 6.0. (VERY good) They always dismissed that. Then I got to see and fix the code that the “Certified in 6 languages” people wrote. Not impressed.
I could talk about how mediocre programmers are being praised by mediocre managers, but I’ll save that for a different rant.
Denise
October 9th, 2008 at 1:12 am
PHP is dead? That’s news to me. It’s alive enough to keep several of my sites going. By the way, I wonder what programming language powers this blog?
Desk Coder
October 9th, 2008 at 8:21 am
One guy I worked with, the college he went to had classes like “Programming in Visual Basic” and “Programming in C++”. He didn’t learn the fundamentals of programming, just the syntax of different languages. He could program some in Basic, but give him anything else, nothing …
I also read somewhere where 80% of programmers are happy just doing their 9 to 5 every day, while the other 20% learn more, read books, expand their abilities. I am happy to say I am one of the 20%, but sadly, the place where I work wants people from the 80%.
Armen Shirvanian
October 14th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
PHP sure is serving numerous individuals at this time, but the Senior Developer you referred to here may either have some idea about the programming of the future, or may not be up to par with the general masses, as far as the coding language that is often used.
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