PHP

About the technology

PHP has been the foundation of my server-side development for nine years, and in that time the language has come a long way from a dynamic scripting tool to a strictly typed, enterprise-grade platform. In modern projects I rely on PHP 8.3: I use typed properties, enums, readonly classes, named arguments, pattern matching via match, and attributes for declarative configuration. Strict typing with declare(strict_types=1) and static analysis via PHPStan at the maximum level let me catch errors before the code even runs and maintain large codebases without fear of regressions. I pay special attention to architecture: I separate the domain, application and infrastructure layers, apply SOLID principles and the repository, service and factory patterns, and avoid excessive coupling. PHP performance in the 8.x line, thanks to the JIT compiler and OPcache optimizations, has reached a level sufficient for most high-load web services. I configure preloading, bytecode caching and profile bottlenecks with Blackfire and Xdebug, optimizing both the code itself and database access. A separate focus is memory and long-running processes: I use generators for streaming large datasets, carefully watch for leaks in queue workers, and when needed run the application in resident-memory mode with RoadRunner and FrankenPHP, which speeds up request handling many times over. The Composer ecosystem, PSR standards and mature libraries make development predictable and maintainable. I write code following PSR-12, document public interfaces, and cover business logic with unit and integration tests in PHPUnit and Pest. Experience maintaining legacy systems taught me to refactor carefully: introduce types gradually, cover critical sections with tests, and migrate to new language versions without downtime for the business. For me PHP is not just a language but an engineering discipline: clean, readable and maintainable code that runs in production for years and calmly survives the growth of load and team.

Experience

Projects using this technology

Articles

• How we sped up our Laravel API fivefold We break down a real path to optimizing a Laravel API: profiling, fighting N+1, caching and resident mode — with before-and-after numbers. 18 May 2026