The PHP Community Is'a Rockin!

I immediately saw 2 very exciting things happening within the PHP ecosystem:

1) FrankenPHP just surpassed PHP-FPM in performance

I've had this conversation with co-workers on multiple occasions within the past few years. It's astonishing to me that php-fpm & fast-cgi are still the go-to software within the PHP community. These projects go back to the 90s and I know the PHP community can do better! For those interested, here's a quick rundown of the timeline (based on various internet sources):

• FastCGI: 1990s
• PHP-FPM (initial version): 2004
• PHP-FPM (more modular, separate project): mid-2009
• PHP-FPM (included in official PHP distribution): PHP 5.3.3 (2010)

The primary point being that PHP has come an extremely long way since these technologies were created. Sure, they've been maintained and updated throughout the years, but that's very different from writing software from the ground up like FrankenPHP is doing.

Their software is not only providing features that we haven't had access to within the PHP community before, they recently merged a PR that provides a "1700% improvement" in CGI-mode!

Check out more details if you'd like, here's the tweet I'm referring to:

2) Symfony's Nicolas Grekas and Arnaud Le Blanc are contributing "Lazy Objects" to the PHP core

As you can see in the RFC, this concept is already used very heavily and there's a long history that these guys have based on trial and error in getting this right! With recent addition of property hooks to PHP, one (that uses PHP everyday) really gets the sense that PHP is reaching a point of real maturity. After having been the "dead language" for so many years, it's great to see the underdog (PHP) making huge strides towards becoming a more respected language in the programming world. I'm no stranger to having to make the case as to why PHP is an equally capable language, but the nay-sayers can only turn a blind eye for long if we continue to make these great strides within the community!