What is a PHP Developer?
PHP
PHP stands for Hypertext pre-processor, and it is used in web development. With this language, we can make web pages dynamic, and they can be directly embedded into HTML.
PHP Developer
A professional web developer who uses hypertext pre-processor in order to develop dynamic web applications, can also conclude that PHP developers are full stack developers who use HTML, CSS, javascript, and PHP to create a complete web development solution.
PHP developer works and maintains the software development life cycle, a massive six-stage development cycle containing requirement analysis, planning, structural design, software development, testing, and later software deployment. The developer has to deal with different people at every stage of development, and without good communication skills, it isn’t easy to be a PHP developer and work for a high end IT firm.
PHP Developer Roles and Responsibilities
The development role consists of several unexpected tasks to deal with at different stages of the development role:
A PHP developer non only has to create web applications and test and deploy the created web application efficiently. Also, a PHP developer must be teamwork as they have to interact with other team members to complete the requirements.
A web developer must be up to date with upcoming new technologies and modern programming practices by reading and continuously educating and improving ones’ programming skills.
PHP developers have to resolve platform and browser disturbances when developing an application on a personal server and solve bugs while making the application responsive.
The developer’s task is to maintain the website server running and implement performance updates and tune the website content.
Skills Required to Become a PHP Developer
We have to master more than just PHP to become a PHP developer. Like a brief knowledge of front-end development stack that includes HTML, CSS and javascript and a front-end framework like React JS, angular, VUE JS etc., basic knowledge of Ajax, and database like MYSQL or MongoDB, APIs.
Basic knowledge of PHP along with open source PHP frameworks like cake PHP.
All the above knowledge combined with good communication, critical thinking capabilities, and solving problems can easily let you land a PHP developer position in any desired firm.
How to Become a PHP Developer?
Step-1: To start working as a PHP developer. First, we require a bachelor’s degree in any relevant field like software developer, software engineer, cloud engineer, or any bachelor in computer science that will give you an upper hand. Still, it is not mandatory to have a degree in any field to be a developer, and we can start fresh and work on projects to become successful developers.
Step-2: Start learning PHP. You can easily learn PHP with the help of using many open-source platforms like YouTube. We can go for PHP development boot camps, which are 6-month long development program that helps in easy understanding of core concepts, or we can peruse an online course on Udemy.
Step-3: Once you have understood the core concepts of programming language, the best practice is to apply the knowledge practically, which can be accomplished by creating small projects, making you comfortable with development details.
Step-4: Once completed with the self-learning part, the best practice is to opt for an internship or placement drive, which will provide you with a good learning experience and guidance from experienced learners.
PHP Developer Salary
The average salary for a PHP developer lies around $75000 to $80000 in the united states, whereas the average salary of a PHP developer in India lies around Rs 270000 to Rs. 300000 per year, on a junior scale, they can earn up to $115K as a senior developer. Also, the pay mentioned above scale varies from company to company according to the size and requirement of the company.
What is the Future of PHP?
As the stats suggest, there is around 5000000 PHP developer around the globe, which shows PHP has a huge active developer community working towards the common goal, which is a great thing for fresher they can easily get support due to vast community, regardless of programming language around 26400000 developers are working continuously for a common goal which is expected to hit a target of around 28000000 developers by the end of 2024.
Still being one of the widely used programming languages, there is remorse that PHP may die till the end of 2025, but as the stats and facts from the previous 5 years. There is a 15 % growth in PHP developer requirement, and almost 80% of the concurrent running websites contain PHP as a backend development language. With such a huge and stable community, PHP will always work irrespective of new programming languages until or unless PHP maintains its standard.
What’s it like to be a PHP Developer?
- Working as a PHP developer teaches a lot more things than just simple programming, which includes
- Communicating with clients and stakeholders to get the exact requirements of the upcoming project.
- Planning a defined solution that includes all the requirements of the client
- Defining a proper structure that contains all the possible functions required by the client
- Developing the structure using core programming methods
- Testing and decoding bugs for smooth functioning
- Deployment process and by maintaining the system live.