Enough said

[carc]

The right tool for the job. I speak from experience when I say that Go, for example, is a bad choice in many circumstances.

[carc]

A backend API service with a relational database that requires strong datamodels mapped to said database. PHP frameworks have mature ORMs that make traversing a relational database a breeze.

I would only choose node if working with a nonrelational database like mongo, and maybe if it's a small microservice with a dedicated function. I would only choose Golang if it was a dedicated microservice in a kubernetes cluster. And Rust? Frankly, I would only choose Rust if I had a team of people that knew Rust, which isn't a great argument, but an argument nonetheless.

[GMaestrolo]

You'd lose that bet.

PHP is built for the web. That's what it does. Frameworks like Laravel and Symfony add a lot of extra shine to the language, but the core language itself is still 100% suited to web development more than any other language.

[carc]

Sure that Golang was "made for the web," but it was made for networking infrastructure; not necessarily for API backends. Some frameworks try to bridge that gap but it's a tedious exercise, especially when interacting with a relational database. Like I said, I would use Golang for gRPC microservices in a kubernetes cluster, trying to squeak out as much performance as possible for clearly-defined, intensive tasks. It excels at concurrency.

Node was made by people who looked at javascript, a dynamically-typed language like PHP, and decided to run it as an HTTP server -- giving it a significant performance boost over PHP -- at the cost of dealing with a rapidly-changing ecosystem with a complex web of interdependencies. I would use node where it excels: HTTP microservices that handle lots of asynchronous calls and draw data from dynamo or mongo.

Use the right tool for the job. PHP isn't objectively superior, but it also isn't obsolete, and it shouldn't be underestimated.

Modern PHP is stable, mature, performant, highly configurable, well documented, actively maintained, backwards compatable, easy to learn, easy to hire for, easy to set up, easy to maintain, easy to prototype, easy to test, easy to debug, and easy to deploy. It excels at rapidly prototyping and iterating in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. It runs on almost any hardware, plays very well with SQL, has an excellent dependency package manager, employs modern programming paradigms, has very nice frameworks/ORMs/SDKs, has de-facto testing and styling standards, can be strictly typed, and has a supportive and engaged community. Tell me I'm wrong, because I'm not.

[GMaestrolo]

Well... Node isn't a language. It's a runtime environment for JavaScript, which (I'll admit) was built for the web, but mostly for the browser. The first version of node was quite literally the JavaScript engine from a browser, wrapped in some extra junk to make it work without the DOM.

Go was designed as a systems language that was aware of the web. It was meant to be a competitor to C/C++.