JavaScript vs PHP— Job Prospect Analysis
We will be using Stackoverflow developer survey for this analysis. We will also only focus on technologies related to web development.
Popularity:
For the fifth year in a row, JavaScript was the most commonly used programming language. The use of Python overtook PHP for the first time in five years. For now, think of Javascript.
As you can see, Javascript rank at the top while PHP is significantly less popular.
React, Node.js and AngularJS is all a javascript runtime.
Salaries and Opportunities:
Developers using languages listed below the blue line in the chart below, such as Go, Rust, and Clojure are being paid more given how much experience they have. Developers using languages below the blue line like PHP, however, are paid less even given years of experience. The size of the circles in this chart represents how many developers are using that language compared to the others. PHP significantly seems to be rewarding developers less and less with the number of years experience that they have.
You can see the average salary for technologies by Region (I didn’t include the Worldwide tab below because PHP didn’t even make it on there) :
Again, we are not bashing PHP here. We are just looking at the numbers to decide what to chose to learn. It is clearly ranking consistently below other technologies like Javascript
PHP popularity is decreasing while the job market and popularity of Javascript is growing. Overall, PHP developers are paid significantly less than other developers and the trend seems to keep widening.
Conclusion:
PHP was one of the top languages in the Web 1.0 era with the popularity of Wordpress.
In particular, asynchronous and event-based architecture of Javascript makes it a great fit for real time applications such as messaging and collaborative apps in which many requests are happening concurrently and there is a lot of back and forth between the client and the server.
The best we can do is to analyze our options and pick the one that will have best return on investment. Looking at the job prospect analysis and technical analysis above, we can see a clear winner.
You can learn about them more by reading to my next post. So Stay tuned!
