If there was a prize for which language is most often being called dead, PHP would win big. Some posts titled ‘Is PHP Dead’ go as far back as 2011.
Regardless of whether one likes this language or not, PHP is very much alive and kicking💪
Given the fact that PHP powers 78.9% of all websites (according to W3Techs), the job market for PHP is in a good place. With the latest release of PHP 8.0, PHP is as also as fast as ever. Ohh, and did I mention that Laravel has been consistently ranking at the top in the various back-end frameworks ratings?
All in all, PHP might not be the sexiest or most modern language, but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon👇
Today, when PHP celebrates it’s 26th birthday, we highlight seven great PHP developers (in no particular order) who actively contribute to the community and prove that this language is alive and kicking.
Jump to your favorite featured developer
- Lorna Jane Mitchell (Developer Advocate | Blogger | Book Author | Conference Speaker)
- Larry Garfield (Staff Engineer | Book Author | Blogger)
- Rob Allen (Software Consultant and Developer | Open-sourcer | Blogger)
- Albert Wolszon (PHP Developer | Blogger)
- Szymon Krajewski (PHP Developer | Flutter Enthusiast | Blogger)
- Paul M. Jones (PHP Expert | Book Autor | Conference Speaker | Blogger)
- Matthias Noback (Blogger | Conference Speaker | Book Author)
1. Lorna Jane Mitchell
Lorna Jane Mitchell (also known as lornajane) is a Developer Advocate for Aiven. She supports developers doing amazing things with open-source data platforms. She loves APIs, scripting languages, and learning new things. She’s also passionate about open source and about sharing what she knows with others.
Mitchell is a published author, blogger and conference speaker, and project maintainer. According to her, she’s ‘happiest when her GitHub graph is green’.
What she’s up to:
- Authored Git Workbook, PHP Web Services and PHP Master
- A regular conference speaker and writer for a number of outlets (including the Avien blog)
- She’s active on her blog, Twitter (14,000+ followers) and on Twitch
- Most recently spoken at Kafka Summit and Stockholm Apache Kafka® Meetup by Confluent
Follow her on:
2. Larry Garfield
Larry Garfield has been building websites since he was a sophomore in high school. Previously, he was Director of Developer Experience for Platform.sh and a long-time Drupal contributor and consultant. He also led the Drupal 8 Web Services initiative that helped transform Drupal into a modern PHP platform.
What he’s up to:
- Serves as Staff Engineer at the TYPO3 project
- Serves as a member of the PHP-FIG Core Committee
- Has authored several books on PHP development including Thinking Functionally in PHP and Exploring PHP 8.0.
- Actively blogs at his own blog GarfieldTech and PeakD
Follow him on:
3. Rob Allen
Rob Allen is a software consultant and developer focusing on solving interesting problems with HTTP APIs. His specialties are PHP, Python, Swift, Slim Framework, Apache OpenWhisk, and Zend Framework.
He runs his own company, Nineteen Feet where he provides consultancy, development and training to clients, concentrating on APIs.
What he’s up to:
- Contributes to various Open Source projects including rst2pdf, Slim Framework and OpenWhisk
- The main author of Zend Framework in Action and contributor to the Zend_Config core component in ZF1
- Shares his knowledge on his blog DevNotes
- Speaks at various conferences such as The Online PHP Conference, PHP Fest Russia, 3 Hours of Serverless, Laravel Conf Taiwan, PHP fwdays’20, Midwest PHP, and others
Follow him on:
4. Albert Wolszon
Albert Wolszon has been programming since he turned 10. With a strong background as a web developer, he’s one of the most followed PHP developers on Github in Poland. Recently, he fell in love with Flatter which he uses for developing amazing apps at LeanCode.
If you’re interested in discovering interesting open-source projects, tips and tricks on PHP and Flatter, you’ll absolutely love Wolszon’s Github account.
What he’s up to:
- Wolszon took 2nd place in the Polish hackathon Hack Heroes and won the international contest Google Code-in.
- One of the most popular PHP, Go and Flutter developers in Poland on GitHub
- Creates lots of nifty apps at LeanCode. The most recent one is this fun package for creating funnily-shaped dashed lines for your app Smiling face with open mouth and cold sweat
Follow him on:
5. Szymon Krajewski
Szymon Krajewski specializes in PHP, but he’s also experienced with JavaScript and its ecosystem, Python, Java, and, Bash. His mission is to help others write better code by showing, explaining and inspiring via his blog, szymonkrajewski.pl.
Follow Krajewski to learn about Domain-Driven Design, automation, high availability, and data security – especially cryptography.
What he’s up to:
- Works as PHP developer at FINGO Software House
- Writes about software development, web technologies and self-improvement on his blog
- Currently trying his hand at Node.js
Follow him on:
6. Paul M. Jones
Paul M. Jones is an internationally recognized PHP professional, working in that language since 1999, and programming in general since 1983.
Paul’s past community leadership involves having been a founding member of the PHP Framework Interoperability Group, where he was the driving force behind the PSR-1 Coding Standard, the PSR-2 Style Guide, and the PSR-4 Autoloader recommendations.
Paul’s historical open-source work includes being the project lead on the Aura for PHP libraries, the architect of the Solar Framework, and the creator of the Savant template system. He has authored a series of authoritative benchmarks on dynamic framework performance. He was a founding contributor to the Zend Framework, now Laminas (the DB, DB_Table, and View components).
What he’s up to:
- Wrote the books Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP and Solving the N+1 Problem in PHP, as well as his white paper on the Action Domain Responder pattern
- His current major open-source project is the Atlas ORM for PHP, a database framework for PHP to help you work with your persistence model, while providing a path to refactor towards a richer domain model as needed
- A regular speaker at technical conferences worldwide
- Active blogger at paul-m-jones.com
Follow him on:
7. Matthias Noback
Matthias Noback is a professional web developer since 2003. Matthias has his own web development, training and consultancy company called Noback’s Office. He has a strong focus on backend development and architecture, always looking for better ways to design software.
What he’s up to:
- Since 2011, he’s been blogging about all sorts of programming-related topics on his blog matthiasnoback.nl.
- He’s published seven programming books (the most recent ones are Principles of Package Design and a Style Guide for Object Design)
- Shares his knowledge on various events and workshops
Follow him on:
Connect with talented PHP devs around you!
Are you looking to connect with talented PHP developers in your area? Make new friends, find business partners, organize a peer support group or even find a mentor via our Developer Leaderboards!
