
PHP is dead…Viva le PHP - Crazyontap
https://hackernoon.com/php-is-dead-viva-le-php-f5dc5eb5c9c4
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cphoover
> "nearly 80% of the internet is running on PHP as of 2018."

I've heard claims like this for years. They almost never explain their
methodology for calculating market share among the entire web. The site linked
actually shows its methodology and it proves that the author is using the
statistic incorrectly.

Under methodolgies:

> _We investigate technologies of websites, not of individual web pages. If we
> find a technology on any of the pages, it is considered to be used by the
> website._

This does not prove that 80% of the web is powered by PHP, but rather 80% of
websites studied had PHP running in some capacity, under the same domain.

It would be wildly inaccurate to assess from that, that

> _" nearly 80% of the internet is running on PHP as of 2018."_ as claimed.

Google.com may have a wordpress blog for press releases running somewhere
under their domain... that hardly means google is powered by wordpress.

Also, for example it would be totally wrong to say Facebook is powered solely
by PHP.

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cphoover
Also, and I say this as someone who has years of experience programming in
multiple languages including PHP--It's a logical fallacy to say just because
most people do something it is the correct course of action to take. This is a
logical fallacy known as _argumentum ad antiquitatem_ or an "appeal to common
practice".

PHP is probably fine for many of the things the author mentioned particularly
brochure, content-based, sites, blogs, portfolios etc... (although
increasingly using static based sites hosted from s3 or other static host
seems to make more sense, in terms of cost and performance.)

Then there is a whole host of other problem domains where PHP does not make
sense as a technology choice, Data Science, Graphics, Comms/Messaging, Systems
programming. Let's choose the right tool for the job. What's the old adage
about "when all you have is a hammer you treat every job as a nail."

