Question..

Is it safe to stay with PHP or do you think js (in backend) is the future?

Php (laravel,..)
Js ( Angular, react,..)

Php is likely to stay along but for what the future holds is more difficult.

I suggest broadening your knowledge.

No matter which, you always can learn from other platforms which will make you a better dev in the long run.

And knowing multiple backends makes you better prepared if the future turns out to be something else.

JS or Go is really the way to go for like social medias and stuff since it can utilize socket io and that kind of stuff

If you use backend js, i sincerely hope you stub your toe

It is safe to stay in PHP. The latest releases are in good direction adding very good features, improving performance and deprecating things.

@Artemix Yeah! Js burn in hell. I hate myself for every javascript code line that I have to write.

I agree with @Letmecode

Hard to point you to any direction without knowing what you actually want to achieve. But there are lots of options beyond just the given 2.

Generally I'd say it's probably good to immerse yourself in the functional paradigm for a bit, it might be a coming trend (again)

Well slack is running on PHP too. But there are certainly a lot more alternatives now than there used to be. No reason to stick to something for good, find a good fit to what you're doing and pick up that skill

@Artemix yeah.. Sorry.
Didn't realise about react and Angular.

But, anyway.. You got the point.

For smaller websites and cms definitely php. For Web Apps and APIs rather Java, ruby or python.

for webservices/api we use nodejs very sucessfully.

JS has much better opportunities now. Node.js is here to stay for long. Python is another good option, if you hate JS. Go is not popular still, but will be in the future.

I hate PHP, so I am biased here, but PHP is already a very competitive place to be and it's very hard to scale, as far as I have seen.

It is an never ending battle... Okay, maybe it's not, but really, go for whichever you enjoy writing more. You will definitely have time to switch in your career lifetime in case you see that the demand for developers of that language is fading. Note: good developers are always in demand, even the not-so-used language developers. There will always be some legacy software that a company simply doesnt want to replace due to price. But IMHO neither php/js will be in that category anytime soon.

@Artemix well I had to work on existing php codes few times last year and they all were extremely unmanageable.
I know a very good php developer who puts it like this.
"PHP is a very easy to learn popular language and it sometimes teach bad design principles. Unfortunately due to the combination of these factors we have a crop of very bad rookie php programmer each year which contribute to the infamousness of the language. It's certainly possible to write good and manageable code in PHP, but it takes an expert or at least an intermediate to do that."

So I advise new programmers to stay away from PHP.

@babeman Agreed, but it's the responsibility of the language to reduce that possibility of bad code. PHP's own API used to be an example of bad code.