Hey everybody today we are going to talk about PHP in 2019. yes, you got it right that we are talking about PHP in 2019. I know most of you are thinking about some modern things in 2019 like node.js, angular, vue, react but today I want to point your attention back on to all the knots a new language which is PHP so obviously this question might be burning up inside you that it is 2019 everybody’s talking about Django, node.js, Ruby on Rails, react, angular. so should I spend my time in learning PHP especially if I’m in 2019 is it a right choice and if I want to start with PHP how can I get started what should be the ideal path of getting started in PHP.
Before I go ahead and talk about PHP and it’s use cases I would like to bring the highlight of the point use cases. Now this is a common thing that I do in universities and colleges when I visit them I usually ask people that hey I hope you love Python or either JavaScript and usually the answer is yes I love – I love JavaScript because these are too modern trendy languages and everybody loves them and my next question to the Python guys is why do you love Python so much the answer that I get is interesting and usually the answer that I get is because it’s easy I love how simplified the Python is and how easy it is to write code in it and to be very surprising.
I would like to ask you another question here do you love a programming language just because it’s easier to write honestly what you’re saying exactly it means is because to write a for loop or if-else statement is easier in a programming language or there are some syntactic sugar over it that’s why you love a programming language if that’s the case I think you are mistaken my friend that should not be the case first and foremost I also love Python but not because it’s having a syntactic sugar in case you will read a few blog and articles on medium you will realize that just we don’t have these curly braces and code indentation is the only thing in Python it is one of the critique point by variety of programmers so definitely Python is obviously favorite language for many programmers but not because it’s having a simplified code or it is not so much verbose it’s because it is having so many libraries and doing things is easier there just because there are so many third-party libraries that you can include in your code and can perform things faster python is also not one of the most fastest programming language but still things are easier just because of these third-party libraries so when next time somebody asks you that hey why I love your programming language your answer should be something like because of the abundance of these libraries and the use cases in variety of scenarios now this brings us to back our point which is use cases before choosing any programming language use cases are the most important thing that you should look up now obviously if I want to make an android app I would love to choose something like either JavaScript or Core Java or as a Kotlin I would never choose something like Python for my Android development surely there are frameworks available but for that use case Python can be an absolutely bad choice now similar on to that if I would love to choose something like machine learning or deep learning things I would love to choose something like a Python there I would love to choose R there I would not like to go with something like PHP or asp.net surely there are libraries and frameworks there as well but I would like to go with Python or R so that is exactly the use case okay that’s too much of the site talk.
Now let’s bring up our journey back onto PHP so a lot of people think that with the emerging technologies like node.js, react, angular nobody thinks about PHP and my dear friend that’s a myth that’s a wrong notion PHP and MySQL is still one of the most rock-solid combinations even in 2019 and I don’t see anywhere this is going anywhere at all this is still rock-solid and is going to be rock-solid as well yes I know I’m aware of that that the modern startups like to invest their time in some frameworks usually Django or node.js, angular, react these kinds of stuff but you cannot avoid the fact that still WordPress is one of the most dominating thing over the web maybe you hate it maybe I hate it but that doesn’t means we are governing the entire Internet it doesn’t matter if I hate something or you hate something it is what it is the fact and the fact says that WordPress is still one of the most dominating technology over the internet and what WordPress is made up of PHP and MySQL a lot of work that we do at in-house for the clients as well it’s still dependent on PHP and that is why finding job with this with the amplified knowledge of PHP is still super easy now this brings us again the question that should I be learning PHP in 2019 and my answer to that would be yes absolutely there is nothing wrong in learning PHP.
PHP you’ll see this in quite a blogs and article as well is little bit funny language yes it is because mainly because of the reason that how you learn the PHP is a little bit on to a funnier side as well as the amount of error that gives us and the element of these errors are absolutely funny as well PHP is still a programming language which is quite easier to find job is quite easier to deliver the project to the clients and especially once you understand the PHP the whole new world of WordPress including the WordPress customization, WordPress theme development, WordPress plug-in development and variety of tons of things just opens up into your programming box just because node.js, Django and all these frameworks are famous nowadays doesn’t means that nobody is using PHP at terms of startup at tons of rock solid companies are still using PHP and MySQL combination as I told you it’s a deadly combination still one of the most powerful one and a ton of people are using it this means that finding job is also going to be much more easier now will you be getting a job into a big scale companies with PHP answer is yes and no it’s it equally depends still a variety of big companies still depends on PHP but moreover kind of job hunting is on to the side where you do a freelancing market if you are one of the guys who are looking forward that I should establish my career in freelancing world then you cannot avoid PHP and MySQL my dear friend there is no escape from that so for all those people who are looking forward that I will be my own boss I would be doing freelancing services on websites like freelancer upwork, fiver and tons of other things there is no skip from PHP and I would highly recommend you to get your entire a game on PHP this definitely brings us to the next question that what should be my path to learn PHP and that actually is a little bit trickier one a lot of people it’s not like a language that you can learn just like Java you can just start with that and you can just go with that PHP if you are going with that kind of way you are going to struggle my friend.
First and foremost don’t compare PHP with other languages like Java or Python or any other language it is not like that now surely just like these languages you can jump directly into PHP but it’s not going to be a fun journey instead you might want to follow this path so what I’m about to give you first for most learn HTML and CSS and not just by learning the syntax of the tags at all I want you to build at least three or four good-looking websites and when I say websites in 2019, of course, there needs to be responsive and they should use modern colours in modern designs so the whole idea is at least make five or six HTML CSS project now a lot of people will say that there is no such requirement to learn PHP because it’s a back-end language and you can totally skip the front-end part. you can but the journey is not at all going to be fun because let’s just taken an example when you learn like for loops in the PHP and you just use an unordered list item that looks absolutely ugly it is no fun but instead when your front-end is actually a little bit beautiful and then you are repeating some stuff it makes things much more interesting so always makes your study interesting so first and foremost spend some time with HTML and CSS maybe bootstrap as well in case you are interested in there in that part so go ahead first spend some time in building up the front-end page and of course this is going to be helping very much help in case you want to deliver a full-fledged project to a client.
So once you are done with the step number one then under step number two you can get started with PHP now yes alongside with the PHP I would highly recommend you to go and understand MySQL as well there are other databases as well but MySQL should be there so step number two go with the PHP learn all the syntax like if loops for loops and all those things which are pretty fun to learn in PHP understand how each and everything works how we can start the codes where you can end and if you don’t end it what happens and all those amazing stuff with the PHP then go ahead and learn MySQL as well. MySQL is one of the easiest databases that you can get started but eventually it can become very complex as well so don’t move on to the complex part yet first try to create small project something like basic crud but of course from the beautiful web-pages now if your plan is to understand the PHP and MySQL as well I would highly recommend you to take a look on PDO as well now PDO is a modern way of interacting with the databases and how we deal up with the basically how the PHP works just noted down somewhere that there is some topic known as PDO you need to learn that as well so that should be on your step number four.
Again quick reputation step number one attack HTML and CSS make few projects in that step number two learn the PHP syntax and basics step number three go on to MySQL basics as well and how we can connect MySQL with PHP and of course how we can interact them with the HTML CSS and as a step number four understand the PDO as well but learning this much is not going to help you to deliver or to serve the clients as well because the client market in the PHP especially on websites like freelancer and up work is very competitive and you won’t be standing much chance just because you have a knowledge of PHP and you can design a few five or six web pages it’s not going to be helping much so you need to step up your game how you can do that let me tell you that as well this brings us to the next topic which is framework in PHP.
Now there are a variety of frameworks in PHP I have majorly worked in just two of them the laravel some call that has larval well however you want to pronounce that and the symphony these are the market dominating ones so I recommend you to get started with that but this is going to help you to get your job in a corporate sector but in case your goal is totally oriented towards the freelancer market then you might want to jump into the market of WordPress now wordpress in itself is a big and gigantic CMS content management system and you cannot master it in just weeks or months it takes definitely a lot of months but it’s certainly doable usually in the freelancing market current are not going to pay you just because you can install WordPress on their hosting services surely these kinds of projects come up there but they are not much of like money they just pay you like $15 or $20 just for that surely that’s a good amount of money for just having a few clicks but you don’t want to involve into that since you are a programmer you might want to get into more trickier jobs and that can be explored using the WordPress codex now WordPress codex helps you to understand the ins and outs of WordPress how we can design custom plugins how we can design custom themes how we can edit a normal-looking website into a wordpress theme these all are using the codex of WordPress.
So in the world of WordPress yes your regular PHP MySQL and sql query works but there are a lot of things to learn and especially the Codex of the WordPress site is going to be something some location on the web page where you might want to stand spend a lot of time now this includes development of the custom WordPress theme and how you can query some of the things in the WordPress yes I know you know how to query into a MySQL database but putting up a query on the WordPress is a whole different game and you definitely require to go through with the Codex of the WordPress quite a lot and in fact on a multiple project so that you properly understand the structure of the WordPress and this structure is changed quite a lot in the version 5 which is recently released in the WordPress so you might want to go through with that codex and don’t just go through with that you should be fully able to design custom WordPress theme you should be able to convert regular bootstrap templates or any other HTML templates into the WordPress templates also you should be able to design custom plugins for variety of needs these are the basic requirement.
Remember client doesn’t pay you for easy work client pay you for the tough work and I’m gonna say it’s not the easiest or tough or the easiest job when you design custom plugins or custom themes surely once you are habitual in that it becomes like a second date to you but of course for the beginners it is definitely a learning curve so now that you know that PHP is not something like gone days it is still here very active it’s pretty easy to find jobs as well both in corporate sector both in freelancer market as well so don’t just learn PHP invest your time in learning frameworks in learning WordPress as well so that you can move forward in life.