With 2023 right around the corner, PHP teams around the world are thinking about how they will accomplish their key projects in the new year. But, as veteran PHP teams know, things can change quickly in the PHP space – making it imperative to stay up to date on the latest PHP trends that will impact their teams and businesses.
In this blog, we give a rundown of some of the top moments of 2022, and the 2023 PHP trends we expect to see shape the PHP world.
The Top 2023 PHP Trends to Watch
There are some big trends and events to watch in the PHP world in 2023, including:
- The emergence of new PHP social media communities: Expect to see new communities like phpc.social grow.
- New features and releases for PHP: PHP 8.3 is set to release in November 2023.
- Security will become a top priority: More teams deploying EOL PHP will migrate or find commercial LTS.
- Ongoing PHP skill shortages: Experienced PHP talent will remain hard to find in 2023.
The Emergence of New PHP Social Media Communities
While this might not be a big trend to watch for businesses, for members of the PHP community, finding spaces to talk about their work is important. For a variety of reasons, events on Twitter have driven many within the PHP development community to seek out new places to do just that. One of those places is https://phpc.social, a “Mastodon server that connects the PHP community and friends on Mastodon and the greater Fediverse.”
Already boasting 83 financial supporters (including Zend) and thousands of active users, we expect to see phpc.social and places like it thrive in 2023.
New PHP Features and Releases
2023 will mark PHP 8.0 end of life, as well as the general release of PHP 8.3. While PHP 8.0 end of life won’t be nearly as impactful as PHP 7.4 end of life, for folks that did migrate to 8.0, upgrading to 8.2 or 8.3 may be more difficult than expected.
While PHP 8.3 has yet to have an alpha release at the time of this writing, there are a few expected notable features and improvements for the release, including json_validate, improved unse
