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🐘 PHP in 2026, the Facts

A small round elephant stands on one pan of a large balance scale, and on the other pan sits a neat stack of documents with charts on them; the scale is level

You have heard plenty of jokes about PHP. But you have also seen it in a great many job postings, in the stack of a respectable company, in the CMS of a site that is never down and answers fast… And you wonder what to make of all that. Who should you believe? The PHP haters, or the PHP fanboys?

This book is here to give you facts, so that you can form your own opinion of PHP as it is, and decide whether it fits your project, your company, your ambitions.

You will see a lot of figures and charts. Every figure is sourced and dated in the appendix. The comparisons are factual; none is left out because it would put PHP in an uncomfortable position.

Give it ninety minutes to two hours, and the opinion you leave with will be your own.