PHP is dead… or is it? Spoiler: it’s alive and kicking

We’ve all heard it before:

“PHP is dead, no one uses that anymore…” 🙄

And yet… PHP 8.4 and 8.5 are delivering some of the most exciting features we’ve seen in years.

🔧 Property Hooks in PHP 8.4

This one is chef’s kiss — you can now group a property with its getter and setter logic, all in one clean and readable block. It’s elegant, efficient, and way easier to maintain.

🔍 Smart new array_* functions

PHP 8.4 brings:

• array_find → finds the first element matching a condition
• array_find_key → same idea, but for keys
• array_any / array_all → check if any or all items pass a condition

➡️ Since most of us deal with arrays (or data that becomes arrays), adding more expressive tools here is a real quality-of-life improvement.

💥 PHP 8.5: Stack traces for Fatal Errors

Yes, finally! Thanks to this RFC, even Fatal Errors will now give you a proper stack trace. Huge win for debugging under pressure.

👉 The magic of the pipe operator (|>)

As explained on php.watch, this new operator is a game-changer:
Instead of deeply nested function calls, you now have a clear and elegant chain of operations.

$final = $input
    |> strtolower( ... )
    |> trim( ... )
    |> ucfirst( ... );

➡️ The result? Clean, modern, and readable functional-style PHP. About time!

🎯 Final thoughts

PHP isn’t dead. It’s evolving, adapting, and bringing in features that solve real, modern development challenges.
If you’re still stuck on PHP 7.4, the problem isn’t the language — it’s your stack 😉