Why PHP Isn't Dying: A Story of Rise, Fall, and Rebirth

Introduction: The Language Everyone Buries, But Uses

If you've ever wondered why PHP is popular, despite tons of memes and criticism, you're not alone. Every year, articles titled "PHP is dead" appear on the internet, but the facts are stubborn: 77% of all websites run on PHP (W3Techs data for 2025). Even WordPress, Laravel, and Symfony are PHP.

In this article, we'll break down the history of PHP from a simple scripting language to a powerful tool that feeds millions of developers. You'll learn the real reasons for PHP's popularity, see PHP code examples, and understand whether you should learn it today. Let's go!

Chapter 1. The Birth of a Legend: How PHP Conquered the Internet

1994: The Day Rasmus Lerdorf Got Tired of Perl

It all started with a simple need: Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf wanted to track visits to his online resume. He wrote a set of CGI scripts in Perl, but quickly realized that lugging around a heavy Perl interpreter every time was inconvenient. Thus, Personal Home Page Tools (PHP) was born.

The first version was a set of macros in C. But already in 1995, PHP/FI 2.0 was released — the first "real" language. The key innovation: HTML code could be inserted directly into the script. This blew the minds of webmasters at the time.

// Example from 1995 (PHP/FI)\n<?php echo "<h1>Hello, World!</h1>"; ?>

Compare this to what came before: in Perl, you had to write:

print "Content-type: text/html\\n\\n";\nprint "<h1>Hello, World!</h1>";

The difference is colossal. PHP allowed web developers to focus on logic, not protocols.

The 2000s: The Era of Dinosaurs and Forums

By 2000, PHP 4 had become the de facto standard for dynamic websites. Why? Three reasons:

\n
• Low barrier to entry: writing a guestbook took just two hours.
\n
• Built-in MySQL support: no drivers, no ORMs — just mysql_connect().
\n
• Hosting: any cheap hosting supported PHP "out of the box".
\n

It was during this period that legendary CMS platforms emerged: WordPress (2003), Joomla (2005), Drupal (2001). They are all written in PHP. If you visited a website between 2005 and 2010, there was a 90% chance it ran on PHP.

// Example of database connection in 2005 (outdated style)\n$connection = mysql_connect("localhost", "user", "password");\nmysql_select_db("my_database");\n$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users");\nwhile ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {\n    echo $row['name'];\n}

Today, this code would horrify any developer (no protection against SQL injection!), but at the time, it was revolutionary.

Chapter 2. Why PHP is Popular: 5 Rock-Solid Reasons

Reason 1: Rock-Bottom Barrier to Entry

To write your first PHP program, you don't need to install a compiler, set up a virtual environment, or understand data types. You just need to:

\n
1. Install Open Server (or XAMPP).
\n
2. Create a file index.php.
\n
3. Write <?php echo "Hello, world!"; ?>.
\n

This takes 10 minutes. For comparison, setting up Django (Python) or Spring (Java) can take an hour even for an experienced developer. PHP for the web is like a bicycle for the city: hop on and go.

Reason 2: Huge Community and Legacy Code

When a language has been used for 30 years, an ecosystem forms around it. PHP powers:

\n
• WordPress (43% of all websites in the world).
\n
• Wikipedia (MediaWiki engine).
\n
• Facebook (originally, partially still).
\n
• Mailchimp, Etsy, Slack (backend).
\