A Letter to an Aspiring PHP Programmer
August 6th, 2007 | By Ian in Opinion, PHP, Rants | 5 Comments »
Below is an email I got through Zend’s certified engineer website. The questions posed by the writer below are not uncommon, so I have posted his letter and my response for general consumption.
Hi,
I am an aspiring PHP programmer. I need some advice from the right people like you before taking a plunge into PHP. I know to know what the future holds for PHP in the web development sector. Why is there more demand for ASP.net or Java than PHP when PHP is the best option available for web development. I have heard that PHP professionals are some of the least paid people in the industry, is this true? why should I not go for ASP.NET or Java as compared to PHP? I know it all comes to one’s interest but knowing a stable path for career is also essential. Please help me and my many other colleagues who want to join the PHP community. Your kind help would be highly a appreciated. Please be frank to give your advice.
–Vibhor S.
Vibhor,
Thanks for your email. From my point of view, I am inclined to believe that PHP is actually in higher demand than ASP or Java. However, the latter two are likely to be more common for large companies. I believe this is mostly the result of corporate decision making and the antiquated belief that PHP is not enterprise class. Companies like Facebook, Flickr, and Digg are rapidly dispelling that myth.
The roots of the enterprise class myth also help to explain the question of compensation. PHP started off as a hobbyist’s language. From there, it became the de facto scripting language for low-cost web hosts. As a result, a lot of personal and small business websites sprung up with PHP as a back end. Lacking the project and budget size of medium and large companies, most jobs available to PHP developers were (and perhaps continue to be) for less pay. This is not to say that there are not good paying PHP jobs available. I live in Seattle and am one of a group of 6 PHP developers for a medium sized company. I believe we are competitively compensated compared to the industry at large.
The other part of the compensation problem might have to do with the experience curve of PHP programmers. I have seen many developer resumes and the large majority of people who claim to be PHP experts are in fact novices or even beginners. PHP is a very simple language to learn and become comfortable with, but that comfort is not the same as knowing (and using) best practices, OOP, or even PHP5. Many PHP developers haven’t had any experience working in a collaborative environment and, frankly, may not be suitable for full-time work in a group of developers.
On the question of why one should choose PHP over ASP.NET or Java, I cannot answer. I chose PHP as my language of choice for personal and perhaps arbitrary reasons. I like that it is open source, works best on *NIX systems, is in active development, offers a tool for just about any job, and has a wide and varied user base. It also helps that the language happens to have a sustainable number of companies offering full-time work for PHP developers.
One might just as well choose Java, ASP.NET, Ruby, Python, Perl, C++, or any other popular web language for their own set of reasons. You’ll find ample work with any of these under your belt. Some might have a brighter future than others, but you’ll still find COBOL programmers out there making pretty good money despite the dwindling need for their chosen skills.
I hope this helps. Good luck with your programming.
–Ian