The results for this year’s State of Laravel survey are now out. Just over 4,000 people participated this year. The survey provides a useful insight into how the Laravel community is working with the technologies available.
These were some of the points that interested me the most.
Modern PHP rules, but there’s a lot of legacy projects
76% are participants use the latest version of PHP (PHP 8.3). However, a lot of people still stated that they’re using older versions of PHP that are no longer supported. For example, over a quarter of participants still use PHP 7.4 which reached end of life back in 2022. Almost 4% are still using PHP 5!
It's worth noting that some of those projects running on older versions of PHP could be due to financial constraints. Whilst ideally, everything would be kept up to date and be running the latest version of PHP, for some this isn't an option. Many small businesses will struggle to justify the costs of upgrading each year to keep up with the developments of PHP. This will be in part why we still see sites running PHP 7, or even PHP 5.
MySQL usage is slowly showing signs of decline
Compared with previous years results, there are signs of a decline in usage of MySQL, although slight. SQLite and PostgreSQL have seen a growth in usage.
The growth of the embedded database SQLite is particularly noteworthy. This is likely driven by its increasing visibility and widespread recognition.
Quality code matters
One really good sign from the data is that people are apparently taking the quality of their code more seriously. Testing, linting and static analysis are all on the increase. Well over half the participants are using unit tests and linting with tools like Laravel Pint and Code Sniffer.
Filament PHP is proving popular
Filament PHP has become a popular choice of library for building administrative panels. 40% of participants stated they use this, compared with 16% who use Laravel Nova.
This result particularly pleases me as I've become a big fan of Filament. It is a really powerful and easy to use Laravel library. I've used it for several projects in the last year.
The Laravel community is loving Livewire and Alpine.js
Front-end reactivity has become an important part of a modern Web app. Back in the summer of 2016, Laravel started to come with Vue.js as part of its offering. Four years later, Livewire became a core feature; and shortly after Alpine.js started to feature as part of a Laravel install.
The survey results suggest people have started moving away from Vue.js and Livewire and Alpine.js are becoming increasingly popular.
There's also a noteable number of participants using React.
Final thoughts
Surveys like the State of Laravel provide an interesting insight into how the developer community is working. It can be useful to see what technologies are growing or falling in popularity as this helps us better understand the direction things are going.
It's good to see libraries like Filament PHP and Livewire gaining popularity. Both can really help speed up development time and lead to quality apps. It's also reassuring to see people are quickly adopting the latest versions of PHP and valuing the quality of their code.
It would be nice to see a little more engagement with the survey if it returns in 2025. This year the number of participants slightly fell compared with the previous year. The more people that get involved, the stronger the insights the results can give us.