PHP may not be dead, but it is still a blackhole.

PHP is far from dead because it still has a lot of inertia not because it has a vibrant ever growing ecosystem.

The biggest sign that something is wrong is that as of 2019 the majority of PHP installations still run on top of PHP 5.x (don''t take my word, go Google it).

PHP should be dead, yes, but it is not.

PHP is big. Really big. Not like C big, but pretty big.

PHP is forgiving. It just works - in a weird and distorted way. Things that shouldn''t be, they are.

Put together BIG with FORGIVING and you get a mess. Indulge me, please.

PHP is a big tent - its ecosystem takes in people from all walks of life and a big variance of skills levels. With PHP, you are probably going to see the most unthinkable combination of people working together.

You may see a Graphical designer that learnt just enough of PHP and Smarty to make a website (and figured out cache in the process of doing it) working with a medium-level software engineer that just also learned what cache is really about (he finally learned that cache are not in-memory databases).

You may see a developer of a platform such Drupal and WordPress working with a Data Scientist to gather metrics of the visitors (the latter would''ve come from R, so she learned just enough to be able to operate PHP to spit out what she needed).

From a far, it looks like a festival of diversity, inclusion. It feels like a sea of opportunities with a large pool of (badly) paying jobs matched with a world of several levels of language know-how.

But when you get closer to this blob, you are sucked in. For good. It is almost impossible to get out.

Having anything related to PHP in your resume will mark you forever.

Post anything in /r/programming and prepared for the barrage of ridicule. Or, make an open source project and observe like almost no one using care about giving changes back.

I could keep going and going. Like a blackhole, PHP has a very dense event horizon where all the light is concentrated. A small handful of important projects like Symfony and PHP itself - and an outer halo of insignificance.

But all it takes is to touch on tiny part of the blackhole to get sucked into it.

For example, let''s assume for the sake of debate, that a developer named Bloberta decides to learn Laravel. Great! She now has Laravel in her accomplishment belt. Woo-hoo!

Bloberta learns Laravel, Symfony, CakePHP, pure PHP, she''s been accumulating lots of experience with the language.

At a certain point she figures: "OK, I would like to keep diversifying my investments". She would think: "Let''s jump to, I don''t know, Ruby".

Great. Bloberta just reset her XP level to zero. I mean, we all know it is not true. But that''s how the world sees it. As a rubyist, her PHP experience means nothing because everyone know PHP is a crappy programming language that crappy developers use to develop crappy software.

Bloberta is stuck in PHP event horizon. She can''t get out.

Bloblert, her brother, has a different experience. He was interested in Linux kernel development. Assembly, C and gcc were his bread and butter. He never managed to land a merge. Either Linus himself or one of the kernel lieutenants would just say the he sucked like a vacuum. He grew a thick skin - he knew way way better what the kind of shit that would go down when docker failed. He decided to move other pastures. Like his sister, he learned that Ruby is a language of shinny happy people holding hands.

As far as the world is concerned, his XP levels are high. He is a strong candidate. He''s going to be called for interviews even though he has zero experience with Ruby. You know, if you can code C you can code in anything.

And finally, their cousin Blobon, seemed the goldilocks child of the family. Ze was always the "midway". Not too far to left, never too far to right. The best value between 1 and 3 is 2. You get the picture right? Blobon learned Basic in the school and quickly moved on to quickbasic, then visual basic, then ASP. Ze would say: "I think it''s a moderate idea to stick to a platform that the majority of the world use in their desktops". You see, vbscript based ASP died somewhere in the 2000s, being replaced by ASP.net. Blobon is a good developer producing solid respectable work for decades.

Ze too wants to move on. Ze hears from their cousins that a) Blobberta knows a lot of websites development but can''t get interviews with Ruby and b) Blobert knows nothing of websites development and yet he lands several high paying job offers.

Blobon is confused. Are you? Because I am. As bad as my friend Blobon.

You see, it took me ages to crack this mistery.

Let me share a little bit about the world of management.

Like software development, managers too specialize in what they do. Usually, you''re not going to see a C-level expert in marketing running the finances office. Or a CTO running HR. They are all managers - each one with a different expertise.

On top of that, there''s this concept of "industry". A CEO that ran a string of automobile companies is usually not the first choice to run an investment bank. It is not impossible, but is very unusual.

There is an exception though - CEO that have built a reputation on topic of turning the boat around. They are usually the last resort, and when they come in, it is a spell firings, cutting benefits - "a company is larger than one person" he would say to justify the lay off. I digress.

Back to our Blob family. What Blobon is witnessing is the blackhole effect.

Blobberta, like the CEOs above, is tagged to be of another industry. Yeah, you read it right. PHP is not software. PHP is not a programming language.

PHP is an industry.

You may learn valuable skills from this industry. But if you want to get out, you need to market your way back into the Software industry.

When you pause, that''s a not a radical concept. Microsoft and Oracle have been trying to create industry-sized products in which they would be able to run vertical sells. No one gets fired by buying Microsoft from hair to toes. Expensive, but safe.

Blobberta is facing a crisis. Blobon introduces her to a friend. Ze says: "she''s a hiring expert - hear her words carefully".

Erih has been working as an IT recruiter for a long time. Recently she landed a job in a Big Company She Can''t Say What Is. Ahead of their meeting Blobberta send a signal text with the resume in PDF.

While sipping her coffee, Erih says: "wow, you know a lot! I am actually looking for a PHP developer right now. Are you interested in a job in a SmallNextBigThingStartUp?"

Blobberta is frustrated and shoots back: "well I guess that''s the problem. I just had a string of bad gigs and few friends of mine that work with Ruby are having the time of their lives. I am actually looking for change. What can I do? I don''t want to work with PHP anymore"

Erih pauses. Looks to the ceiling. Rubs the chin. "here''s my problem. I see PHP all over the place. All the PHP frameworks. In the summary for almost all of your previous jobs I see how you managed to bend PHP into doing what you wanted it to do. I don''t see a lot of software development experience. Do you know anything about it?"

Blobberta says:"of course I do. I am graduated in CS, for Pete''s sake. And I could tell you all the war time stories of making things scale, be less error prone etc"

In a low voice Erih said: "wipe out PHP from resume. Tell me the software development stories. I should see PHP and its lingo just once. In the end where you list all the technologies you know of. And ah! Also make sure you have at as many non PHP tech stack as PHP ones. I gotta go. Let''s meet next week."

Blobbert is working at the MindJobs consultancy. He''s been doing lots of work in Ruby. He shares the experience with Blobberta. She gets more frustrated.

Blobon suggests that she should get a MS certification and give dot-net a try.

Blobberta goes nuclear. She deletes and make private all of her PHP code in Github. She copies and pastes some small Ruby projects into few repositories. She has some of her girlfriends to star them. In her resume, she tells all that she did using PHP - but don''t give names. "If they want to know what I used, I am going to let them ask". She goes even as far as making sure that all her past contributions to PHP projects are now linked to a weirdly named account. Unless you know that Bl0b3t4 is her, you can''t connect the dot.

PHP became a toxic material.

Blobberta gets her first job interview with the new resume in a week. Land a job offer in two weeks. She gets a raise of roughly 20%. She escaped PHP blackhole by denying it.

True story.

The end.