My TLDR is:
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Their team was using PHP
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Before doing a complete re-write they evaluated other languages
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Rust ruled out due to cost/benefit, being the fastest in the list, but also the most complex
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PHP kept as the main language because:
- The ecosystem is mature
- The PHP/Symfony (and Roadrunner) stack meets their high-performance needs
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Inertia: their team “already had extensive experience” in it
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They already integrated Go in some microservices
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They aren’t locked to PHP, and will continue to evaluate these programming languages and others
Why switch if you don’t need to?
The point is evaluating your stack once in a while. Eventually, you may need to switch or it may be worthwhile, even if you can stick with your current stack at a disadvantage.
For an extreme example, WordPress with crap page builders. It may not have been “that bad” when you started with it. But by now its very much worthwhile to switch. You don’t “need to”, but you should.
Back to this post, maybe they really are at that point that slowly switching is worthwhile. At least partially, where it makes the most sense (they mention using some microservices written in Go).
Because writing web apps is boring as fuck, and evaluating switching provides a reason to stop coding in PHP, and write an article about how they still need to write PHP.
Personally I doubt I’ll ever reach the switching point. But the trend for PHP devs seems to be switching to Go (when they do switch).
