PHP is used by 76.5% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know. Alternatives such as ASP.net, Ruby, Java, and JavaScript don’t even come close to this share of the market.

Additionally, PHP 8 as a major release may mean older PHP code could be broken after upgrading. However, Roose noted that most of the breaking changes were deprecated before the 7.x versions.

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PHP core developer Sara Golemon clarified that Microsoft dropping support for PHP 8 doesn't mean Windows won't support PHP 8. "This message means Microsoft aren't going to produce official builds ...

Builds will stop with version 8.0 and beyond, and support for PHP 7.2 will end in November. Microsoft will stop contributing Windows builds of the popular PHP scripting language 8.0 and beyond ...

Apart from PHP—which held a 72.5 percent share in 2010 and holds a 78.9 percent share as of today—only one other server-side language ever broke a 10 percent share.

The PHP team has unanimously voted to integrate the Libsodium library in the PHP core, and by doing so, becoming the first programming language to support a modern cryptography library by default.