I haven't seen much job ads for PHP devs recently. Where did they all go? Did nodejs stack finally displaced PHP as the best way to do a quick and quirky backend?
A good place to start is the Stackoverflow Developer Survey (http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016). The 2016 results show PHP as the 5th most popular technology (25.9%) compared to Node.js (17.2%). PHP has dropped and Node.js risen by 5%~ since the 2015 results.
However, their "most dreaded" list has LAMP at 68.7%. Being that nearly three quarters of all people using a LAMP stack do not want to be doing so. Conversely, Node.js is loved, with 59.6% of respondents who develop with it wanting to continue to develop with it.
Whilst PHP represents 3x the volume of Node.js topics, Node.js topics has risen 26.8% since last year, and PHP dropping 3.8%.
Import to note though is that whilst PHP declined, WordPress also increased 18.5%. MySQL's results still fairs better than SQL Server.
The survey results note:
> The average developer regularly uses between 4 and 5 major programming languages, frameworks and technologies. The most common 2-technology combination is JavaScript & SQL. The most common 3-tech combination is JavaScript, PHP, and SQL.
I would argue that PHP is completely alive and kicking but people aren't interested in it as much. Given the age of PHP compared to Node.js, and the way trends work, I think it is far early to crown a new LAMP king.
You can find YC companies that use PHP by going to https://triplebyte.com/ycombinator-startups and looking at PhP for technologies used. (linking is broken, so I can't send you the actual link). That said, when I do it, 19 show up that are currently hiring. Given that YC companies are a very small amount of total possible tech companies hiring, I would say that LAMP is not dead.
I actually think something better is happening: it's possible to write backends in a lot more languages. Go, Swift, Rust, and Elixir come to mind as becoming usable for web backends in the last 5 years or so. People just seem to write their backend in the language they like the best.
Then you have BaaS and things like Postgraphql that mean that writing a backend by hand is becoming a thing of the past. Lots of good developments, but not necessarily a "new PHP" that's replacing PHP.
However, their "most dreaded" list has LAMP at 68.7%. Being that nearly three quarters of all people using a LAMP stack do not want to be doing so. Conversely, Node.js is loved, with 59.6% of respondents who develop with it wanting to continue to develop with it.
Whilst PHP represents 3x the volume of Node.js topics, Node.js topics has risen 26.8% since last year, and PHP dropping 3.8%. Import to note though is that whilst PHP declined, WordPress also increased 18.5%. MySQL's results still fairs better than SQL Server.
The survey results note:
> The average developer regularly uses between 4 and 5 major programming languages, frameworks and technologies. The most common 2-technology combination is JavaScript & SQL. The most common 3-tech combination is JavaScript, PHP, and SQL.
I would argue that PHP is completely alive and kicking but people aren't interested in it as much. Given the age of PHP compared to Node.js, and the way trends work, I think it is far early to crown a new LAMP king.