HACKER Q&A
📣 joxwi

PHP or Go?


Hi! I would like to know if it is currently more worthwhile to learn PHP or Go. Currently I have a relatively profound knowledge in Java Spring and would like to learn a new language to broaden my backend development skills. Go looks very interesting to me and impresses with the number of cool projects written in the language. PHP on the other hand seems to me more like a foundation that you need as a backend developer. What do you think, if you had to decide?

I am also open for other tips.

Thanks a lot in advance.

  👤 ironmagma Accepted Answer ✓
I think Go is more foundational. If you can understand Go, you’ll mostly be able to learn PHP without problem; learning PHP is mostly endurance sport, via trial and error of using the builtins which are fairly unintuitive purely because of bad design. A strict PHP linter will speed up the process significantly though. Go is more like C on easy mode, but because C is so close to the kernel, you’ll likely learn a lot about Unix and the data structures by learning Go.
👤 runningmike
Learn good programming. Set your goal. What do you want to learn and why? Language choice is of less importance. Front end and backend is a strange to split programming tasks. Programming means you understand and can do everything..