From PHP to React: How Mixing Logic and Templates Went From Chaos to Best Practice 🤔

Remember when PHP was seen as a bad example of coding? Developers used to mix PHP logic directly into .php files, creating what people called “spaghetti code”—messy, hard to maintain, and difficult to scale. This led to frameworks like Laravel and Symfony, which encouraged cleaner code and a clear separation of logic and design.

Now, fast forward to today. React, the popular front-end tool, does something similar—it mixes logic with templates. JSX, React’s syntax, lets developers write JavaScript inside HTML-like components, blending logic and UI together. But instead of being criticized, this is now seen as modern and a best practice.

And it doesn’t stop there. Tools like Livewire and Inertia.js are following the same path. Livewire allows you to write PHP components that include both logic and templates, while Inertia bridges the gap between backend frameworks (like Laravel) and frontend frameworks (like React or Vue), effectively blending server-side logic with client-side rendering. Both tools embrace the idea of mixing logic and templates, just like React does.

So, what’s different? Why are React, Livewire, and Inertia praised while PHP was criticized?

✅ Component-Based Design – React, Livewire, and Inertia all promote reusable, self-contained components, making code more organized and easier to manage compared to old PHP scripts where logic was all over the place.

✅ Compilation & Optimization – Tools like React (with JSX) and Livewire compile their code into optimized outputs, ensuring better performance and cleaner runtime execution.

✅ State Management – React handles UI updates efficiently using state and lifecycle methods, while Livewire manages state on the server side, making dynamic interfaces smoother and more predictable.

✅ Better Tools – Modern tools like Babel, Webpack, TypeScript, and Laravel’s ecosystem have made development more structured and scalable, far beyond what PHP offered in its early days.

The Ironic Twist

What was once considered bad in PHP is now standard in tools like React, Livewire, and Inertia. The key difference isn’t about mixing logic and templates—it’s about how it’s done. These modern tools brought structure, best practices, and powerful ecosystems to an idea that PHP used in a messy way.

So, maybe PHP wasn’t entirely wrong—it just needed better tools and practices. 😉

What do you think? Was PHP unfairly criticized, or did React, Livewire, and Inertia just do it better?