PHP Is Not the PHP You Remember
Many developers still picture PHP 4 or 5: insecure code, missing type safety, chaotic standard library. But PHP has changed dramatically in recent years.
PHP 8.x — A Modern Language Standard
PHP 8.0 brought Named Arguments, Attributes, Union Types, and the Match expression. PHP 8.1 added Enums and Fibers, 8.2 Readonly Classes, and 8.3 Typed Class Constants. The language is consistently moving toward strict typing and expressiveness.
Frameworks
Symfony and Laravel are the two dominant frameworks — and both are excellent. Shopware 6 is built on Symfony, which means for plugin developers: Dependency Injection, Event-Driven Architecture, and a mature ORM (Doctrine) are the standard.
// PHP 8.2 Readonly Class
readonly class ProductPrice
{
public function __construct(
private float $net,
private float $gross,
private string $currency = 'EUR',
) {}
}Tooling
- PHPStan / Psalm: Static analysis at the highest level
- PHP-CS-Fixer: Automated consistent code style
- Composer: Mature dependency management
- PHPStorm: The best IDE for PHP, period.
PHP isn't sexy — but it delivers. And at the end of the day, that's what counts.