PHP

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/42626008

Not yet released.

PHP, a server-side programming language used mainly for building dynamic websites and web applications, has just released version 8.5, a major update that adds new syntax, expanded attribute support, performance improvements, and multiple RFC-driven features.

Sent 30 Oct. I am late.

The mailing lists version: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/129030

So, you know how readonly properties are, well… read-only? Turns out they’re not!

(Nextcloud is written in PHP)

Following conversations with SerheyDolgushev we decided that it doesn’t make sense to maintain independent forks of the Tolerant PHP Parser. – https://github.com/phan/phan-tolerant/pull/15

Loops Joins the Fediverse

Setting up xdebug with swoole could be a bit of a hustle especially if application is containerized and you are running swoole and xdebug in a docker container with IDE on the host.

I’m using 8.1/8.2 for production …but I do have some pet projects in 8.4 that I might upgrade

Cool article

Starting with PHP 8.5, you'll be able to do the following:

This change is quite straightforward, so this won’t be a long article. PHP 8.5 adds support for annotating non-class, compile-time constants with attributes. Compile-time constants are those defined using the const keyword, not the define() function.

PHP has long had a levenshtein() function, but it comes with a significant limitation: it doesn’t support UTF-8.

June 17, 2025

Internals link: https://externals.io/message/127120

Note: I am not the RFC author.

A summary of the highlights and key accomplishments of the Symfony project in 2024.

My TLDR is: - Their team was using PHP - Before doing a complete re-write they evaluated other languages - Rust ruled out due to cost/benefit, being the fastest in the list, but also the most complex

Ever wanted to provide your arguments to a function as a comment?

I've been working on this on and off, could use some other eyes to help expand features, maybe some pull requests. Let me know what you think. I just uploaded version 0.0.12 and I am going to start working on 0.0.13. The CMS is built in a bundle, so that's where most of the features are. What I have linked here is the skeleton app, but installation is still beefy. Thanks everyone!

See new features here (related blog posts list)

In conclusion, it is easy to see PHP in 2024 as the forgotten child of web development, while JavaScript is the most popular kid in class. Sadly for PHP, its decline in usage is unlikely to stop any time soon — why would it, when WordPress developers are busy adapting to a new JavaScript paradigm? But at least there is active development at the PHP Foundation.