Do you avoid PHP jobs when job searching?

Question

I find myself doing so unless I really like the rest of the job and/or company enough to offset the PHP requirement. I don't totally hate PHP, but I just don't enjoy developing with it. And there still seems to be a stigma associated with it that it can't shake despite much progression and improvements.Is this PHP job aversion irrational? Just curious if anyone else here would also skip over a job posting if it involved PHP development.

basilgohar · Accepted Answer

I have been developing exclusively in the traditional LAMP (and then later LEMP) fashion since around 2002
PHP the language is great both despite and because of its neat quirks. It is among the easiest to get started with and deploy quickly. But that means the barrier to entry is so low that a lot of PHP deployed out there is garbage.
I would put it like this – maintaining someone else's PHP code can be difficult, but starting a new PHP project from scratch, especially with a modern framework like Laravel, can be really enjoyable.
So, I wouldn't say you should avoid a PHP job on principle, but find out if the code followed the PSR standards, used a recent framework, or something else that can give you some hope for a sane chance at understanding what the previous developer did.
And yes, you can screw up even using the standards or the frameworks, but you have to try harder and actively work against best practices in those cases.

purerandomness · Answer

Are you using modern PHP?Composer, PHPStan and/or Psalm, and modern frameworks like Symfony?