Why PHP Remains a Viable Choice for Web Development in 2024

Although some view PHP as an outdated and low‑end language, it surprisingly remains the most widely used language across websites in 2024, often associated with WordPress, which critics sometimes label as the least popular software of the 21st century.

Putting aside these biases, PHP’s flexibility and broad applicability make it popular: it is easy to learn, powerful enough for complex web tasks, and backed by a massive community and abundant resources that help developers quickly solve problems.

Its maturity and stability also shine when building large, high‑traffic sites; notable examples like Facebook and Yahoo have used PHP, demonstrating its reliability and scalability for big projects.

Therefore, even if PHP is not the newest language, its practicality, stability, and wide usage still make it a solid choice for web development in 2024.

Performance

Over time PHP’s performance has been continuously optimized, especially with the latest PHP 8.1 and subsequent releases, delivering impressive execution speed. While it may lag behind Go or Java in certain niche scenarios, PHP matches or exceeds the speed of Python and Node.js in many cases, offering developers a fast and convenient development experience.

Development Efficiency

Even if you are unfamiliar with PHP, its high similarity to Python means you only need to adapt to minor syntax differences to become productive quickly. This similarity greatly boosts development efficiency, allowing you to write high‑quality code faster. Whether handling simple CRUD operations or complex files, webhooks, and websockets, PHP lets you achieve goals with concise code thanks to a wealth of ready‑made libraries, reducing the need to build everything from scratch.

Deployment

A major advantage of PHP is its straightforward deployment process, which scales easily even for large projects. By using a simple PHP server together with Nginx, you can launch and run your project within a few hours.

Scalability

Scalability requires proper load balancing, especially in high‑load environments processing millions of requests daily. Even without load balancing, implementing effective caching at the endpoints can handle many challenges and keep the system stable. The key is to allocate resources and optimize performance according to real‑world needs.

Clean Code and Readability

While writing clean code in PHP can be challenging, using framework‑provided scaffolding such as Laravel mitigates the issue. Even in large APIs exceeding 200,000 lines of code (excluding auto‑generated files), adhering to simple, clear coding principles maintains high readability, facilitating maintenance and team collaboration.

I believe Python is the only programming language best suited for writing clean code.

Conclusion

Overall, we recommend using PHP/Laravel to build the core API because the framework is powerful and greatly simplifies management of large codebases, boosting development efficiency. However, for special requirements—especially tasks involving artificial intelligence or other CPU‑intensive operations—we suggest considering languages optimized for those workloads to ensure the project remains efficient, flexible, and technically appropriate.