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Is PHP Dead? Why I Still Use PHP as a CTO (And How We Built the First ShipleeCargo Panel With It)

đź“… June 8, 2025 đź“‚ Journey, Tech Stack

1. Why PHP Refuses to Die: Mythbusting the “Dead Language” Label

If you’re reading this, you’ve already seen the meme.
“PHP is dead.” “No one ships real products in PHP anymore.” “Modern engineers hate PHP.”
Scroll any startup forum, Twitter thread, or LinkedIn hot-take carousel and you’ll find the same refrain.

Let’s be honest.
PHP is the “whipping boy” of modern programming.
It’s the language everyone loves to hate—except, quietly, the language everyone’s business depends on.

When I started ShipleeCargo (now evolved into Shiplee.ai), I too thought:
Should I use Node? Should I hire Python devs? Is PHP too old-school?

But here’s what no Twitter thread will tell you:

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Why Do People Still Hate PHP?

But PHP has quietly evolved.

Why Does the Meme Persist?

It’s simple.
Every new wave of devs learns the fashionable stack of their generation.
But the world runs on old tech—because businesses care about uptime, ROI, and getting things done.

2. What Really Kills or Grows a Tech Stack

So what actually kills a language or stack?
It’s not memes.
It’s not age.
It’s not even performance benchmarks.

It’s three things:

PHP nails all three.

The “Boring is Good” Principle

Most unicorns don’t run on whatever is hyped at the next JSConf.
They run on stuff that was boring 10 years ago: PHP, Java, C#, .NET, Postgres, MySQL.

Because business is about uptime, margin, support, and getting to market first—not “most elegant code.”

My First CTO Reality Check

When we built the first ShipleeCargo control panel, my main concern was speed:

With PHP, the answer was always yes.
With more “modern” stacks, we’d still be stuck hiring, debugging, “learning.”

3. Lessons from the Indian SaaS Battlefield

There’s a massive difference between what works in Silicon Valley and what works in India (or Indonesia, Brazil, Africa…).

How PHP Solves Real Problems

The Hidden Value of PHP

The Cost of “Cool” Tech

We tried “modernizing” fast—migrated small modules to Node, Python.
Here’s what we got:

Clients don’t care. Investors don’t care.
Your business only cares: can you ship, can you grow, can you keep the lights on?

4. PHP’s Place in the Modern Stack (2025 and Beyond)

Let’s get one thing straight—the tech world loves to declare things dead:

And yet…

PHP sits in the same paradox.
If you look at a chart of programming language popularity over the past 25 years, you’ll see PHP never leaves the top 10.
Sure, it’s not flashy. But it’s always there—stable, boring, and indispensable.

Why?

For a CTO building in the Indian SaaS space, these factors matter more than language fashion.
They’re why so many Indian logistics, fintech, and eCommerce success stories quietly rely on PHP.

5. The Untold Power of “Boring” Tech

Let’s talk about a dirty little secret in the tech industry—“boring” tech makes you money.

All the unicorns you see in the news—Ola, Flipkart, Swiggy, Byju’s, Zomato—didn’t start on some obscure, cutting-edge stack.
They started with tools that got the job done.

As a CTO, you’re measured on:

No one cares if you’re running the latest JavaScript framework if your platform is down on the day of a mega sale.
No one thanks you for using Rust if your feature releases lag behind the competition.

When I chose PHP for ShipleeCargo’s first panel, it wasn’t because I loved the syntax or wanted to be different.
It was because “boring” meant:

The best products in the world are built on stacks their founders barely talk about.
You win by getting things done, not chasing the latest buzzword.

6. Building for Bharat: The Real-World Indian Tech Context

If you’re building SaaS in India (or any large, diverse, developing market), your reality is different from that of a Silicon Valley startup.

Here’s what you deal with:

PHP fits this context like a glove:

“Building for Bharat” means being practical, being fast, being affordable—and PHP helps you deliver on all three.

7. Panel Evolution: From Bootstrap to Blazing Scale

Here’s a CTO truth:
Your first version is never your last.

The first ShipleeCargo panel?

But as you grow, things change:

With PHP, this evolution is incremental.
You don’t have to throw everything away; you refactor, optimize, and migrate when necessary.

How we did it:

PHP is uniquely suited for this kind of step-wise modernization.
You’re never locked in. You modernize on your terms.

8. The Human Side: Growing a Team in PHP

The best tech is worthless without people to build and maintain it.

PHP’s real power in the Indian context is talent:

Compare this to “cool” stacks:

When you need to build a team, scale fast, and support clients 24×7, PHP gives you leverage.

And because PHP codebases are less “magical” (no hidden build steps, no Webpack puzzles), onboarding is easier.
Your team spends more time shipping, less time learning.

9. Speed > Perfection: PHP for Rapid Market Fit

Here’s an unpopular opinion:
Your code doesn’t need to be perfect. Your product needs to be in the market.

PHP lets you:

This speed is why we survived the early years:

Perfection is the enemy of progress.
PHP is the language of progress.

10. The DevOps Angle: PHP and Modern Infrastructure

You’ll hear a lot about containers, Kubernetes, cloud-native, and serverless.
All amazing innovations—once you’re at scale, with a big team, and complex architecture.

But for 90% of SaaS businesses in India?

When you do need scale:

This means you spend less time wrestling with servers, more time solving customer problems.

11. What Breaks at Scale (and What Saves You)

No tech is perfect, and PHP has limits.

But for most SaaS admin panels, dashboards, and B2B flows?
PHP does the job.

What saves you at scale:

12. Security Mindset: PHP and SaaS

Security is real.
Yes, PHP had a reputation for “easy to hack” panels—mostly because it was so popular and so easy to build bad code.

But modern PHP, when used with best practices:

What matters is not the language—it’s the discipline:

PHP is only as secure as you make it—just like Node, Python, Java, or anything else.

13. What I’d Never Build in PHP—And What I’d Always Build

As a CTO, you have to play to a language’s strengths.

What I’d never build in PHP:

What I’d always build in PHP:

PHP is for getting the “core” business logic shipped, so you can build your moat.

14. Frameworks That Changed the Game: Laravel and Beyond

If you still think PHP means “spaghetti code,” you haven’t seen modern PHP.

Laravel made PHP cool again:

Other frameworks:

Thanks to these frameworks, you can build robust, scalable, beautiful apps in PHP—no shame.

15. Integrations, Ecosystem, and Third-Party Realities

If you build in India, you need integrations—fast.

PHP has libraries, SDKs, and example code for every single one.

You win by plugging in, not reinventing the wheel.

16. Legacy: Handling Old Code with Grace

Every product accumulates legacy code.
PHP is no different.

The beauty of PHP:

Embrace legacy. Refactor with care.
Don’t break what’s working for real users.

17. Community Power: Open Source and PHP

PHP is the most “open” of open source:

This means:

When you’re in a crisis, community beats any fancy paid support.

18. The Future: PHP, AI, and API Economy

You might think: “Okay, but what about the future? AI, ML, and new APIs?”

Here’s the surprise:

As the world shifts to API-first, microservice, and AI-driven apps, PHP will keep powering the glue that holds businesses together.

19. Advice for the Next CTO/Founder

Don’t chase hype.

In five years, no one will ask what tech you used—they’ll ask what problem you solved.

20. Final Thoughts: What Matters Most

If you’ve made it this far, you know:

Be practical. Be fast. Be disciplined.
And above all—be a builder, not just a coder.

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Simi kaur
Great explain sir đź‘Ť

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