Particularly ironic is PHP ranking high for ``This language is likely to be a passing fad''. Given its 17 years of history and recent the recent progress with versions 5.3 and newer... whoever voted on this position either wasn't aware of PHP's actual situation and outlook, or was just being thinking wishful.
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> Why does almost everyone know the language?
If anything, it is that almost everyone can dabble in PHP and ^C^V some code. IMHO real knowledge of PHP and its ecosystem seem to be quite rare -- judging by reading some published code, which was as generic and un-PHP as possible, and by comments attached to the official docs.
Given its 17 years of history and recent the recent progress with versions 5.3 and newer... whoever voted on this position either wasn't aware of PHP's actual situation and outlook, or was just being thinking wishful.
I don't know, I think it's a good prediction. Look at this chart for example (yeah, I know... tiobe isn't necessarily an accurate indicator but still):
In the 2000s, PHP was everywhere. But recently, Rails, Django, Node.js etc. seem to be much more prominent. Maybe thinking of PHP as a fad is slightly... optimistic, but I wouldn't call it "wishful thinking" as if PHP was here to stay forever as one of the most popular server-side languages.
I'm not saying PHP is going away this year or the year after that, but consider that some languages that go back to the 50s (Lisp) are enjoying newly revived popularity (Clojure). Do you really think this would happen to PHP in 2050?
-- EDIT --
> Why does almost everyone know the language?
If anything, it is that almost everyone can dabble in PHP and ^C^V some code. IMHO real knowledge of PHP and its ecosystem seem to be quite rare -- judging by reading some published code, which was as generic and un-PHP as possible, and by comments attached to the official docs.