The most popular general-purpose programming language is PHP, which is used for web development.  Also, thousands of websites run PHP on their servers. Several Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, are entirely based on PHP which inspires freshers to learn PHP and go for backend development using this language.

The web becoming more capable and moving beyond simple websites to include single-page web apps, is the reason why Node.js JavaScript on servers is increasing. The following will lead us to the most popular language used by developers.

Server-Side Language Node.js

According to a report, more and more organizations are shifting to another server-side language Node.js due to its rising popularity.  The organizations are moving to Node.js due to the backend for their websites and services. Although PHP may be the cornerstone of the web, Node.js trend is expected to bring numerous changes to the industry.

The developers were already aware of the upcoming changes even when they were using JavaScript as a scripting language in the browsers for many years. Due to the demand for single-page web apps increasing rapidly, most developers are now using it at the backend, which runs under Node.js environment.

Investigation Results

A survey showed that developers using Vue.js JavaScript framework, admitted that they use Node.js more frequently than PHP as a backend language. According to the state of JavaScript 2018 report, it was found that Node.js was often used by 63% of developers and PHP by 50%. There are also numerous reports with clear evidence that Node.js is growing and used by the majority of developers.

Node.js user survey report in 2018 figured out how the language is being used and their investigation results showed that people are using Node.js mainly for web-apps and enterprise applications. According to a report, many custom web development India agencies and across the globe are continuing to embrace the rising popularity of Node.js, with many people preferring it due to its flexibility and utility for a wide variety of use cases.

Other Websites Still Run on PHP

You cannot always take a decision based on these surveys because the problem with the mentioned surveys is that their conclusions are mainly based on the developers’ views who primarily work with JavaScript. It is also not a must for companies to use Node.js. Companies can decide to useNode.js for some websites while leaving others to keep running on PHP. Moreover, sites running PHP on their servers are not ready to spend money soon to shift to Node.js; therefore, PHP developers are still here to stay.

Conclusion

PHP made it the best 10 in the previous year’s Stack Overflow Developer Research list of the most widespread languages, although it is dragging behind JavaScript in its popularity as a language. The ongoing transition away from PHP on the website continues to take place. There are also vast numbers of websites running PHP on their servers; hence they don’t have to shift to Node.js anytime soon.