I don’t know if it’s due to over-exposure to programming memes but I certainly believed that no one was starting new PHP projects in 2023 (or 2020, or 2018, or 2012…). I was under the impression we only still discussed it at all because WordPress is still around.
Would a PHP evangelist like to disabuse me of my notions and make an argument for using PHP for projects such as Kbin in this day and age?
First off, any language/framework is just a tool.
Second, modern PHP is quite different than 2005 PHP which is about when people started moving to other languages for web development (Ruby, Python, etc.). What you can and should write in PHP today would be almost identical to what it would look like in those languages (i.e. MVC frameworks, ORM for DB access, dependency management with lock files). Many language features were added too such as namespacing which allow for better/modern code organization.
PHP has always had (and never lost) it’s dead simple capability to just package up a tar ball, ftp, unzip and just… run.
Would I use PHP today, not unless forced to or for a lot of money. But if it’s a language a team knows, there isn’t a benefit to switching to something else.