Why PHP Is Thriving in 2024: New Features, FrankenPHP & Laravel Momentum

#PHP is Evolving

When Nikita, a major PHP contributor, left two years ago, I feared for PHP's future. However, the PHP Foundation now has a solid community with ten paid core developers. Current focus includes a financial voting mechanism and a redesign of PECL, the extension manager.

#FrankenPHP

FrankenPHP is a Go‑written PHP application server that delivers significant performance gains and is easy to adopt. It can compile PHP projects into standalone binaries, supports long‑running mode, runs up to three times faster than PHP‑FPM, and includes HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support.

Both Laravel and Symfony have begun supporting FrankenPHP, indicating its growing importance.

#Laravel

Laravel’s marketing strategy is effective, and the open‑source framework remains the most popular in the PHP community. The company has expanded its ecosystem with products built on Laravel and recently added six new staff members across COO, BizOps, and engineering.

Laravel Livewire, which enables interactive applications without JavaScript, continues to attract developers, and I have experimented with it while creating games.

Exploring New PHP

It is encouraging to see developers from outside the PHP community rediscover it. Many JavaScript developers now recognize Laravel as a valuable tool, and creators like ThePrimeagen share their excitement on YouTube.

Artisan and Packagist

The PHP ecosystem keeps growing, with an increasing number of packages. Packagist recently surpassed 105 billion downloads, doubling in two years, underscoring the vitality of the community.

In short, PHP is far from dead; its evolution and community momentum suggest a bright future.