Rethinking PHP: Why It Might Be the Smartest Choice for Web Dev in 2025 🚀

Let’s be honest, PHP sometimes gets a bad rap, often based on experiences from a decade ago. Terms like “spaghetti code” or associations with older platforms might spring to mind. But here’s a bold statement, echoing Vincent Schmalbach’s recent piece: Modern PHP, particularly when paired with the Laravel framework, has transformed into arguably the best choice for building web-based software today.

It’s time to look past the outdated criticisms and see PHP for what it is in 2025: a fast, professional, robust, and incredibly productive language.

The PHP Renaissance: Blazing Speed & Modern Features ✨

If you haven’t looked at PHP since version 5, you’re in for a surprise.

• Performance Revolution: PHP 7 (released 2015) and PHP 8 (2020 onwards) delivered massive performance leaps. We’re talking drastically lower memory usage and execution times – benchmarks often show PHP 8+ running nearly 3 times faster than PHP 5.x. The old “PHP is slow” argument? Completely obsolete. Modern PHP handles high traffic efficiently, often matching or beating other dynamic languages.
• Modern Language Capabilities: PHP hasn’t just gotten faster; it’s become more robust and developer-friendly. Key additions include:
  • JIT Compilation: Potentially compiles PHP to machine code at runtime for even greater speed.
  • Stronger Typing: Features like union types and strict typing options enhance code reliability and maintainability.
  • Attributes (Annotations): Allows for structured metadata within code, similar to Java or C#.
  • Modern Syntax: Nullsafe operators, named arguments, match expressions, enums, readonly properties, and more make coding cleaner and more expressive.

Today’s PHP stands tall as a first-class, modern language, equipped for complex application development.

Enter Laravel: The Framework That Redefined PHP Development 🏆

Much of PHP’s resurgence in popularity and prestige can be attributed to Laravel. It’s more than just a framework; it’s an ecosystem and a philosophy (“for web artisans”) that makes PHP development elegant, productive, and genuinely enjoyable.

What makes Laravel stand out?

• Developer Experience: Clean syntax, adherence to MVC principles, and a focus on making common tasks simple.
• Batteries Included: Provides high-quality, integrated solutions for:
  • Eloquent ORM: Intuitive database interaction.
  • Database Migrations: Safe schema management.
  • Blade Templating: Clean and powerful view logic.
  • Artisan CLI: Code generation, task running, and more.
  • Built-in Systems: Authentication, routing, caching, queues, job scheduling, event broadcasting are often just a command away.
• Vibrant Ecosystem: Tools like Inertia.js seamlessly bridge Laravel backends with modern JS frontends (Vue, React, Svelte) without the typical SPA complexity. Additions like Horizon (queues), Passport (API auth), and Scout (search) extend capabilities further.

Laravel exemplifies modern PHP’s strengths, offering a cohesive and powerful platform that rivals any web framework available today.

A World-Class Ecosystem & Tooling 🛠️

Modern PHP development is supported by excellent tooling:

• Composer: Widely praised as a best-in-class dependency manager, making package management reliable and straightforward. It’s often considered superior to NPM in terms of structure and security practices.
• Standardization (PSRs): PHP Standards Recommendations ensure code consistency across projects and libraries (autoloading, interfaces, coding style, etc.).
• Mature Testing & Debugging: Tools like Xdebug, PHPUnit, and Pest are well-integrated into modern workflows. Laravel actively encourages testing from the start.
• Excellent Documentation: Both PHP and especially Laravel are known for clear, comprehensive documentation and vast learning resources (tutorials, videos, forums).
• Deployment Simplicity: PHP hosting is ubiquitous and often cost-effective. Deploying to shared hosting, VPS, or containerized environments is generally simpler compared to other stacks. Tools like Laravel Forge further streamline server management.

This mature ecosystem translates directly into high developer productivity and maintainable applications.

Busting Old PHP Myths 👻

Let’s tackle those lingering, outdated criticisms:

1. Myth: “PHP = Spaghetti Code”: This refers to early PHP practices of mixing logic and HTML heavily. Modern PHP development, especially with frameworks like Laravel or Symfony, enforces separation of concerns (MVC), uses dependency injection, follows coding standards, and looks nothing like the PHP of 15-20 years ago. Judging modern PHP by old scripts is like judging modern JavaScript by <script> tags filled with jQuery soup from 2009.
2. Myth: “PHP is just for WordPress”: While PHP powers WordPress (which prioritizes backward compatibility), this doesn’t define PHP’s capabilities. Modern PHP is used for building complex, mission-critical applications from scratch using clean architecture and robust frameworks. It’s a general-purpose web language, not solely a CMS engine.
3. Myth: “PHP is Insecure”: Security is about development practices, not the language itself. Early PHP’s accessibility meant beginners sometimes made mistakes. Today, the language has built-in protections, frameworks prevent common vulnerabilities (SQLi, XSS, CSRF) by default, and the community is proactive about security. Secure applications can be built in any language if best practices are followed – and modern PHP makes this straightforward.

How PHP/Laravel Stacks Up 🆚

Compared to other popular stacks for typical web application development:

• vs. Node.js: PHP’s stateless, request-per-request model is often simpler and more robust for web servers than Node’s single-threaded event loop (a crash in one request doesn’t bring down the server). PHP avoids Node’s notorious dependency hell and often allows for faster feature development due to its rich standard library and integrated frameworks like Laravel.
• vs. Python (Django/Flask) & Ruby (Rails): While excellent frameworks, PHP/Laravel has arguably evolved faster in recent years, offering a more comprehensive and modern out-of-the-box experience and, often, better performance for web request workloads.
• vs. Go: Go excels in raw performance and concurrency for specific low-level services. However, for general web development, PHP/Laravel’s massive ecosystem and “batteries-included” nature mean significantly faster development speed and less boilerplate.

The Verdict for 2025 ✅

Modern PHP, supercharged by Laravel, offers a compelling package:

• Excellent Performance: Fast execution and efficient memory usage.
• High Productivity: Mature ecosystem, great tooling, and an integrated framework speed up development.
• Robustness & Scalability: Proven in production at massive scale; easy to scale horizontally.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Abundant developers and affordable hosting/infrastructure.
• Maintainability: Modern features and standards promote clean code.

It’s no longer just a choice; for many web-based software projects, PHP with Laravel is genuinely one of the best choices you can make today.

What’s Your Take? 🤔

Have you worked with modern PHP and Laravel? Did this change your perspective at all? What’s your go-to stack for web development and why? Share your thoughts below!

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Further Reading & Attribution:

This post expands on the ideas presented by Vincent Schmalbach in his article “PHP is now the best choice for web based software”. Check out his original piece for his full perspective!