Preface

PHP 8 represents the culmination of the PHP core development team's work to maximize efficiency in the core language. Your application code will immediately see a boost in speed as well as having a smaller memory footprint just by migrating to PHP 8. Further, in PHP 8, developers notice that a tremendous effort has gone into normalizing syntax and language usage. In short, programming in PHP 8 is a joy to developers who appreciate adherence to good coding practices.

However, this inevitably leads to the question: where does the PHP language go from here? PHP 8 provides the answer to this question as well, in the form of the Just-In-Time compiler and support for fibers. The latter forms the foundation of asynchronous programming and has been announced for PHP 8.1. PHP 8 gives you a glimpse of the future of the language, and that future is looking extremely bright!

If you put all this together, it becomes clear that understanding and mastering the new features and stricter coding practices implemented in PHP 8 is vital to those who wish to pursue a serious career as a PHP developer. This book is exactly the tool you need to get up and running with PHP 8 quickly. Not only do we cover new features, but we also show you how to avoid traps that could lead to code failure after a PHP 8 migration. In addition, we give you a glimpse into the future of PHP via thorough coverage of the JIT compiler and PHP asynchronous programming.