Do you think PHP is good for web applications or one day it might back fire?

ALL will fade one day and become a history and new will arise, but it is not an issue.

if you are interested in PHP, just carry on. get it , practice it. get expert on it. and that will help you to understand any other web programming language or any new concept.

Because the structure is similar with a slight different from one to another.

So I advise you to continue learning and practicing PHP and have a look to other concept of other developing programs.

thank you.

Assalamualaikum Wr. Speaking from experience, I have used PHP, Python, Ruby and Java to develop web applications. Then there is also Go, Scala, Erlang, etc.. All are ok. I'll try to give a general answer given all fall into two distinct categories which each person intuitively can separate into.

I think the safest language to start developing web applications in is PHP.

 

I will give you some reasons to develop in PHP.

1 - Learning curve and entry barrier is really low. You also have many PHP developers around, compared to the other languages. If your company needs to hire programmers to maintain to work on the web application, it will be easier to find.

I won't say it will be cheaper because good programmers in any language should be paid properly whether they demand it or not. 

If you ever decide to sell your web application, certainly an application written in PHP will be easier to sell than one written in Ruby or Python. Given it is easily to get into.

2. PHP is high performing and efficient given PHP is close to C. Second only to Java and other good VM based language in terms of raw performance. But Java web application development takes longer even though you are an expert at it. There are more built-in libraries in PHP without reverting to external libraries.

3. It is cheaper to host a PHP web application compared to one written in Ruby, Python, Java or any other language. You also get more resource for your money. Web applications in other languages normally require more initial resources like memory and processing power to get started.

4. You can scale and grow your web application easily. If you ever become facebook like big you can port to HHVM easily.

 

Reasons you might not want to develop in PHP and use Java, .Net, or similar etc:

1. If your web application might be "mission critical" or for the enterprise.

2. If you require better exception handling.

3. Real high performance, low latency applications like High Frequency Trading for example.

4. Multi-threading. Access and control of resident memory.

5. Statically typed language. Better debugger and debugging.

 

I might have missed many pros and cons for both.

 

Finally for a chat room web application. You might want to grow it or even sell it in the future and being on a student's budget it will bring you the best return; in terms of performance too. There is no right or wrong.. but the best choice would be PHP after taking everything into consideration. Congratulations!

PHP is a mature language. I believe it will not backfire due to it flexibility and opensource capability. I have been using PHP for the past6 years and I can see the enhance being done to language everyday. 

PHP has played and is playing a vital role in the industry. I don't think so that it will back fire because it is has a complete opensource package (Linux, PHP and MySQL).

I don't think it will backfire, but it will improve over time.

So far its a good known programming language!

There is nothing like back firing. Every programming language is different from other. Moreover its open source and mature language, many things have been worked upon it hence its considerd stable. Php consists of almost30% of the web coding. So at some point of time there is a need for developers to redactor it or maintain it. Though future is unpredictable, learning a language like PHP will surely benefit you as catalyst in learning other scripting languages. Any effort you put to develop something fetches you experience and helps you to taste that language. With the advancement of cross platform programming, learning lightweight scripting language like php which does not use many resources and runs on all browsers would really be beneficial.

PHP and also JAVA are very proper for web application.

There are some PHP framework specialized for web app.

Also Python is very competitor but it is new so it will take a time to spread.

I think not because they contain a lot of flexible tools