Motivation—Why PHP 8
Explore PHP 8's major improvements including faster performance, reduced memory use, and syntax normalization. Understand how new features like the JIT compiler and fibers lay the foundation for asynchronous programming. This lesson equips you with the knowledge to master PHP 8’s advancements and prepare for future PHP development.
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PHP 8 represents the culmination of the PHP core development team’s work to maximize efficiency in the core language. Your application code will immediately see a boost in speed as well as a smaller memory footprint just by migrating to PHP 8. Further, in PHP 8, developers notice that a tremendous effort has gone into normalizing syntax and language usage. In short, programming in PHP 8 is a joy to developers who appreciate adherence to good coding practices.
What about PHP?
However, this inevitably leads to the question: where does the PHP language go from here? PHP 8 provides the answer to this question as well, in the form of the Just-In-Time compiler and support for fibers. The latter forms the foundation of asynchronous programming and has been announced for PHP 8.1. PHP 8 gives you a glimpse of the language’s future, which is looking extremely bright!
Why should I learn PHP 8?
If you put all this together, it becomes clear that understanding and mastering the new features and stricter coding practices implemented in PHP 8 is vital to those who wish to pursue a serious career as a PHP developer.