August is one of the months that I devote to job trends. Last week I focused on the Python, PHP, JavaScript, Flex and Groovy.

According to the results on Indeed Javascript is in huge demand right now, completely overshadowing the others on the list. PHP came in second here. The results from SimplyHired show a similar story, but the gap between Javascript and second place - Flex - is a bit smaller. PHP came in third here.

[Two] weeks ago, Ibuildings organised the fourth Dutch PHP Conference in the RAI centre in Amsterdam. DPC is a way for us to help PHP developers learn new skills and improve existing ones, but it is also an excellent way to get experts from around the world together and learn about current trends in the PHP ecosystem.

Topics mentioned include the unofficial naming of PHP 5.3.99, CouchDB/NoSQL, an emphasis on web services, plenty of talk on best practices for PHP development and a growing trend about security in general for all web-based applications.

The data below is generated automatically from twitter. To cast your voice you can simply send a reply to @phpmagnet with frameworks you use, like, or suggest.

As it stands at the time of this post, Drupal seems to be at the top of the "interest" charts with CakePHP coming in second and Symfony in third. Zend Framework tops all three lists (Suggest/Like/Use) in popularity. You can read more about the project here.

• Developments to object-oriented code practices
• Using a VCS
• Continuous deployment
• More code testing
• More use of rapid application development tools
• Monitoring of production systems
• Bytecode caching
• and more...

These are just some suggestions of things to look towards including the best if them all - "love your code".

I have been critical of ZF in the past because the performance has pretty much been going down every release and I am not the only one seeing this, there have been a number of benchmarks that show this trend. Having contributed to ZF in the past I brought this issue up multiple times both on the mailing list and even during the meetings the past zendcons and it the general response was they where focusing on features not performance.

He points out a few things that were brought up at this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo including the performance focus of future releases, a push to 2.0 after PHP 5.3's release and some of the changes that can cause breaks in backwards compatibility.

Be sure to also check out Matthew Weier O'Phinney's response to the post and some of the comments Richard made.

• There were no surprises, only data reinforcing already set trends
• PHP 5 now make up over a third of all PHP installations to date
• More installations moved up to PHP versions 5.2.5 and 4.4.8
• Apache has almost reached 70% of the web server market share

You can check out the full details on this month's stats page including the evolution stats over on Nexen.net.

PHP, previously in the number four slot, has been superseded by Visual Basic by a decent margin (a difference of 1.18%). This shows as a drop in popularity (as measured by the survey) to be trending back down to where it was around the middle of 2005. It still remains in the top five, though, in a close race with Visual Basic and C++ for those three positions.

The full language list and graph showing the trends back to 2002 can be found on the TIOBE website.

A friend recently told me that PHP is on its way out, Ruby on Rails is where it's at. I scoffed. I chuckled. Then I gave it some thought. Could PHP have had its day?

[After my research] I have to conclude that my friend might be right in one respect - PHP has had its day. If the trend continues, it means that PHP will one day not be the hottest thing on the web like it is right now.

He's not abandoning ship just yet, though - he notes that:

PHP still has plenty of legs, and it will take quite a bit to wind it. I'm not sure what will take its place, but somehow I don't think Ruby on Rails will be the successor. PHP's advantage over the rest is that it's a web application, through and through. It doesn't try to also be a desktop application language, a server application language, a widget application language... it just spits out web pages fast and efficiently.

In breaking down the statistics for the period of December 2005 through January 2006, over 1.9 million domains are using PHP, and the number only continues to climb. In February, the upward trend continued and usage jumped up 1 million domains more. March, however, has only seen about 100,000 additional domains making the total 21,439,178. On the server side of things there's never much fluctuation and it still sits steady around the 1.3 million mark.

PHP usage took a hit in usage around the beginning of the year, but it's coming back quickly and will soon be back up to the 23 million domain usage soon.]]> Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:57:31 -0600