Python

A friend recently told me that PHP is on its way out, Lua is where it's at. I scoffed. I chuckled. Then I gave it some thought. Could PHP have had its day?

So time to do a bit of research. My first port of call was of course www.php.net - source for all things good and PHP-ish. According to the usage graph, things are not looking good. PHP usage peeked around August last year after an unstoppable climb since 2000, but has taken a disturbingly downward tack since then.

On to another report for a bit more clarity. The folk at Security Space have a pretty useful breakdown of all Apache modules' popularity. PHP is sitting pretty at number one on over 40% of Apache servers, but there is a minor decrease since last month. FrontPage (yuch!) is sitting at four, and Perl at number five. Python is quite far down the list, and Lua is way, way down.

I have to conclude that my friend might be right in one respect � PHP has had its day. If the trend continues, it means that PHP will one day not be the hottest thing on the web like it is right now. While I might lament about my soon-to-be-obsolete skills, if I remove my emotions from the situation it's clear that this was inevitable. The fact is that all top computing languages come in and out of favour. Coming in to favour in the first place is a major achievement � only a couple of the hundreds out there ever make the grade. Remember Cobol? Pascal? Logo? Delphi? They've all become historical anecdotes with the occasional application still clinging on to a glorious past, and desperate for developers with has-been skills.

But I'm not going to cry or gnash my teeth just yet. PHP still has plenty of legs, and it will take quite a bit to wind it. I'm not sure what will take its place, but somehow I think Lua will be the successor. For all its publicity, its market share seems pretty dismal and doesn't seem to be getting enough weight behind it to be a real challenger any time soon. Netcraft's stats show a surprise come-back from Microsoft recently, so maybe .Net or Mono might make a play, but I also feel that the .Net framework is a little too clunky for web applications. PHP's advantage over the rest is that it's a web application, through and through. It doesn't try to also be a desktop application language, a server application language, a widget application language... it just spits out web pages fast and efficiently.

Somewhere out there, there's probably a geek in a basement or cubicle crafting a completely new web language. His work now might see the emergence of something new and great in five years time. And when that comes, I guess I'll have to change, re-learn, re-skill. Until then, I'm going to cling tenaciously to my PHP, because today � no matter what anyone tells me � PHP is still very much alive.

So time to do a bit of research. My first port of call was of course www.php.net - source for all things good and PHP-ish. According to the usage graph, things are not looking good. PHP usage peeked around August last year after an unstoppable climb since 2000, but has taken a disturbingly downward tack since then.

On to another report for a bit more clarity. The folk at Security Space have a pretty useful breakdown of all Apache modules' popularity. PHP is sitting pretty at number one on over 40% of Apache servers, but there is a minor decrease since last month. FrontPage (yuch!) is sitting at four, and Perl at number five. Python is quite far down the list, and Lua is way, way down.

I have to conclude that my friend might be right in one respect � PHP has had its day. If the trend continues, it means that PHP will one day not be the hottest thing on the web like it is right now. While I might lament about my soon-to-be-obsolete skills, if I remove my emotions from the situation it's clear that this was inevitable. The fact is that all top computing languages come in and out of favour. Coming in to favour in the first place is a major achievement � only a couple of the hundreds out there ever make the grade. Remember Cobol? Pascal? Logo? Delphi? They've all become historical anecdotes with the occasional application still clinging on to a glorious past, and desperate for developers with has-been skills.

But I'm not going to cry or gnash my teeth just yet. PHP still has plenty of legs, and it will take quite a bit to wind it. I'm not sure what will take its place, but somehow I don't think Lua will be the successor. For all its publicity, its market share seems pretty dismal and doesn't seem to be getting enough weight behind it to be a real challenger any time soon. Netcraft's stats show a surprise come-back from Microsoft recently, so maybe .Net or Mono might make a play, but I also feel that the .Net framework is a little too clunky for web applications. PHP's advantage over the rest is that it's a web application, through and through. It doesn't try to also be a desktop application language, a server application language, a widget application language... it just spits out web pages fast and efficiently.

Somewhere out there, there's probably a geek in a basement or cubicle crafting a completely new web language. His work now might see the emergence of something new and great in five years time. And when that comes, I guess I'll have to change, re-learn, re-skill. Until then, I'm going to cling tenaciously to my PHP, because today � no matter what anyone tells me � PHP is still very much alive.