Most web development start-ups have the same problem – What programming language to pick? Which language should we specialize in? Technology selection can be a real drag, especially when dealing with larger teams of specialists with different favourites in mind. Here’s food for thought: do successful companies become successful because of the technology they used or the technology itself becomes popular because it’s used by a successful company?
Currently, PHP is not a popular choice for web development start-ups – most web development teams opt for Django or Ruby on Rails but in recent years PHP technology has evolved substantially - even to the point of becoming a direct rival for Ruby on Rails or Django.
PHP is actually an incredible tool for web development start-ups – it offers all the functionality of RoR at a much lower cost. PHP is great for web development projects which involve multiple components and rely on multiple tech solutions. Here is a list of reasons why PHP is a great tool for web development start-ups:
PHP allows fast web development
PHP is actually one of the fastest programming languages which you can use to code, deploy and execute. The whole language was designed on finding the fastest and shortest solutions to any web development problems. Apart from that, PHP’s lovely community has been moving it towards modular design.
PHP frameworks offer libraries and bundles which are ready to use, mouldable and easily configurable. If you’re interested in using PHP for web development you should definitely check out the Sonata Project for the Symfony framework – it offers ecommerce tools, content management features, technical utilities and admin bundles which in turn enable web development companies to lower their work load and shorten their path to the finished product.
PHP is cost effective
Web development companies won’t have any trouble with finding replacements for their team members, hiring new members or project stuffing. PHP developers are much cheaper than developers specialized in other programming languages – this can lead to a more affordable and competitive finished product. Certain very useful tools are free for use with PHP – these include integration tools like Deployer, Phing Project, Capifony, the PHPUnit framework and the Composer dependency manager.
Programming quality
PHP offers plenty of educational materials and best practices materials regarding common or complex programming tasks. While some may voice criticism of PHP unpredictability and inconsistency it’s good to remind users that these are problems of the past. The newest versions of PHP offer great frameworks such as Symfony and Laravel and great efforts have been made to define precise basic coding standards and guidelines.
Conclusions
PHP is a great tool for any web development start up, given its guidelines, processes and conventions. A solid team with plenty of experience will get your start up going in no time!
