PHP unexpectedly tops Stack Overflow's most loved languages ranking

PHP — the King of Developers' Hearts: An Unexpected Triumph on Stack Overflow

The annual Stack Overflow developer survey traditionally brings surprises. In 2024, the main surprise was the triumphant return of PHP to the top of the most loved programming languages. According to the latest data, PHP took first place, surpassing community favorites such as Rust, TypeScript, and Python.

This result is particularly notable against the backdrop of long-standing stereotypes about "boring" and "outdated" PHP. So what changed? The answer lies in the rapid evolution of the language and its ecosystem.

Why Do Developers Love PHP Again?

Experts attribute the sudden surge in popularity to several key factors:

• The PHP 8.x Revolution. The latest versions of the language (especially PHP 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3) have radically changed perceptions. Attributes, named arguments, readonly properties, enums, and JIT compilation have made PHP a modern, strict, and fast language. Developers who haven't seen PHP in 5 years won't recognize it now.
• Ease of entry and a huge community. PHP remains the most accessible language for creating web applications. A huge number of ready-made libraries, frameworks (Laravel, Symfony), and documentation allows you to quickly solve both simple and complex tasks.
• Dominance in CMS. WordPress, which powers more than 40% of all websites on the internet, is written in PHP. Joomla, Drupal, Bitrix — all these giants are built on PHP. Developers working with these systems feel in demand and secure.
• High salary and demand. Contrary to myths, PHP developers (especially at the senior level) receive competitive salaries. The job market for PHP specialists is consistently high, especially in the segment of supporting legacy projects and developing new startups on Laravel.
• A reactive community. The PHP community actively updates its tools. The modern PHP stack (Composer, PHPStan, Pest, Laravel Octane) is not inferior in convenience to the ecosystems of Go or Rust.

What Do the Numbers Say?

More than 90,000 developers participated in the 2024 Stack Overflow survey. PHP received a high percentage of votes in the "loved languages" category, surpassing Rust, which had been leading for the last 8 years. Notably, PHP also showed one of the lowest percentages in the "most dreaded/disliked languages" category — another sign of a paradigm shift.

Interestingly, Python, which is considered the king of Data Science and machine learning, lost to PHP in terms of community "love." This suggests that web development remains a fundamental field, and PHP feels confident in it.

Conclusions for PythonLib

For readers of our site who are studying Python, the news of PHP's leadership is an excellent reason to broaden your horizons. Python and PHP are often compared, but in practice they rarely compete directly: Python is ideal for backend, data analysis, and AI, while PHP is the best choice for websites and CMS. Knowledge of both languages makes a developer a universal soldier in the job market.

You shouldn't blindly trust the hype around a single language. The Stack Overflow rating showed: PHP is not dead, it has been reborn and is ready to surprise again. If you haven't seen it in a while,