I’ve been researching the backend recently and I’m increasingly struck by the disconnect between the technologies promoted on code camps and the technologies actually used in the marketplace.
PHP is a case in point. It’s probably the most popular server side technology out there, and yet, not a mention on freeCodeCamp, while Codeschool has only just got round to adding its first PHP course, despite having 10 courses on Ruby, and even a course on Golang.
So am I missing something here? Is it a case of wanting to teach the next big thing or the flavour of the month (hello React)? Or a belief that developers currently in training won’t have to do any maintenance on existing code bases? Or is it that PHP is seen as belonging to a different ecosystem?
In my opinion, I think it’s personal basis like MAC vs PC vs Linux. Funny thing is PHP drives a lot of the Internet. Most popular CMS are written in PHP like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento.
At work, most of the internal websites are written in Classic ASP or ColdFusion. There are Developers who hate any kind of scripting languages. They prefer to use Java or ASP.Net.
I always tell them the public Internet is mainly written in a lot of scripting languages like PHP, Python, Ruby, and Node.
In the end it boils down to using the programming language based on the project and client preference.
I think generally, they want to help you get starting using one technology. FCC does not want you to loose sight of your goal. To learn how to code full stack, and teach you algorithms. I think a lot of us fall in this category where we want to constantly learn, and don’t have the confidence to build things so we feel like we need to learn more.
FCC has a plan for you, to help you learn enough to get a job. Once you have a job you already know the algorithms. Now you need to learn the syntax, and method names. I would suggest to just focus on what you’re learning here and trust that people get jobs before people finish the course.
As a beginner web developer, I have noticed a “Us and them” mentality when it comes to PHP vs Javascript. In the JS world, PHP doesnt seem to be wanted or needed.
Ironically though, most web dev jobs advertise for PHP (& frameworks) first, coupled with a deep knowledge of Javascript (& frameworks) as an add on…
FCC has a lot of goals and objectives that we want to achieve. This takes time, energy, and contributions to our open source project.
If we do not provide a course for a certain computer programming language , it doesn’t mean that we think that language is of less. It just takes time to grow and to be able to provide multiple services for users. We have a lot of improvements that are underway.
We could really use your help if you are interested in contributing to FCC!
I don’t really mind the language, I did a bit of PHP in the past.But with JavaScript, I can be lazy(read:more productive) and spend less effort on learning a new language.It’s difficult enough to master one.Definitely will learn a new one later, but not necessarily PHP.
The thing is PHP is only used for web applications. There are many other languages that don’t have such a narrow purpose. Maybe at this time you are more interested in web development, but in future you might want to try desktop development, Android\iOS, IoT, Game Development, data science and so on…
I work for a web development company. I have all three certifications. I write html/css and php 95% of the time because that is what our cms is written in. PHP is a fine language. A little more OOP than js but most of of your skills will carry over. I am also working on a java program and learning C#.
Infact, if you have ever used EJS on an express node stack it is more or less php with js. So haters gonna hate.