"Learn PHP! nearly 90% of the web is done in PHP"

That's EXACTLY the reason you DON'T want to work with PHP. Tutorials, SO answers, blogs, every source of info is FULL with bad practices, horrible patters or no patterns, spaghetti code... Most PHP devs are web scripters who have absolutely no background on software engineering whatsoever.

Do yourself a favor, unless you plan to learn Laravel and stick with it, don't, do not, don't'm'st, don't'm'st've go with PHP ... just don't

If not PHP then what are the recommendations to alternatives?
Asking because in school I learned PHP and been wondering which others languages could better

I've been thinking NodeJS, Ruby or C# (ASP.NET).

I already used C# and it's very good.

NodeJS and Ruby catches my interest, mostly because devs seem to care about testing and SOLID principles more than 90% of PHP community.

Note: I say NodeJS cause I'm refering to serverside programming with javascript. Vanilla/frameworkless client-side javascript community is same as PHP's: mostly scripters with no SE background.

I switched from PHP to Node a few months back. My APIs are cleaner, faster, and simpler. Plus package management and overall debugging is just so much easier for me now.

@feril what stack do you use? I've been thinking MEAN js, but since I discovered VueJS, I'd rather one with that one over Angular

@rephiscorth I use Node, Express, with Nginx and Linux, and Angular on the front end. I don't use Mongo however. I use MySQL due to supporting large databases that need lots of relational support.

@feril I'd most likely pick Express. I wonder if I can hook it up with Vue hahaha

@rephiscorth I'm curious why you prefer Vue over Angular? Only because I use Angular. Is it just because it's lightweight? Or are there strong benefits that you've found?

Don't make me rewrite stuff with Vue now...

@feril No reason. I just read Vue is more lightweight and have a easier learning curve. But honestly I should stick to what the community works with.

Since my focus is for production ready deliverables for customers, I should avoid things like "there are only a couple of docs on Vue with the rest of the stack", whereas with angular there is a ton (just an example, I'm new to both frameworks).

Another example would be Docker. I'm DYING to learn it, but every article says it's not ready for production environments yet.

I love coding and everything, but I have other hobbies too so I don't want to learn some tech for fun w/o aiming to make some cash out of it, not now at the very least.

Also, more than coding, I love testing. So I'd rather learn frameworks and overall tech that's designed with testing in mind.

Learn PHP from a trusted source would be my conclusion then. Not don't learn PHP.

If you asked a monkey to teach you Python you would be really bad at it as well. But you can't blame Python for that. Mostly you got yourself to blame because its kinda silly to think a monkey could learn you to code in Python.

@aronmik exactly, that's why I said "unless Laravel...". I feel that's the only community where the majority codes with SE concepts in mind.

I've tried other 2 PHP frameworks (big boys, but not gonna name them to avoid a flamewar) and almost every tutorial, solution, etc. is a poorly designed script... solves the issue, yes, but it's still a big code smell.

@rephiscorth I would want to know PHP before using a framework that uses it.

So that you understand basic concepts. I like laravel as well :)

Symfony is a good framework

Every language has its weaknesses...
PHP has a lot of crappy coders because it is easy to learn and a non specialized person can do web stuff even if it is good or bad regular people can play with it.
.NET for me it is a beautiful blackbox, it does magic but you don't know how. A lot of .net devs don't know about a raw http request because the framework does it for you.
Non C-syntax languages are confusing for me. Python is a jewel in CLI, Web and other stuff but it has a bigger leerning curve.
I think I missed the point but hope this helps.

TL;DR: Learn best practices and pick the language you like the most or the one with more documentation

@Xunie we can all provide our own perspectives. Coming in here and and doing nothing constructive but bitching about other people's work environments just makes you sound like a pretentious asshole. If that's what a Haskell dev is like then I'll pick my way any day.

@jmachacas Python with Django is good.

Assembly...

No, i prefer c#

I use .net core and it's awesome. It's also supported by MS to run on Linux!

I learnt PHP about 6 years ago... Now I am doing a CS Degree at a top 10 uni in the UK. I had a careers fair the other day, I showed off my PHP knowledge and 4 companies tried to buy me out of uni on a 37k wage. I'm a first year. PHP FTW.

@joshgallagher24 yeah, I'm also making bank out of PHP. Doesn't mean I don't hate it though xD