MacLochlainns Weblog

My students often ask me about popular PHP frameworks and MySQL approaches. I wish a PHP framework choice was as clear as a JavaScript framework, like AngularJS. Unfortunately, PHP frameworks aren’t that clear cut.

It seems that the most popular PHP frameworks are: Laravel (1^st), Phalcon (2^nd), and Symphony2 (3^rd). I found the following graphic (from December 2013) that highlights popularity by percentage of the market (though I can’t guarantee its accuracy). As far as jobs go, on Dice.com only Laravel had more than 3 positions referring to the framework by name. There were actually 42 PHP developer positions that mention Laravel out of 2,115 PHP developer positions. So, it seems learning a specific framework for PHP doesn’t yet have much market appeal.

While learning the basics of PHP are generic, frameworks expedite process and control pattern implementation. My suggestion to students is to target three to five employers that use a specific framework and start learning how to use the framework. I’d like to get opinions from those in the field whether this is the best advice.

As to MySQL, I suggest they learn native Mysqli and MySQL PDO. Any other suggestions on that from readers? Thanks as always.