21/07/2026
From the day I started using PhpStorm, I almost forgot about all the other editors.
The reason for this was the powerful language server in PhpStorm, which was not available in any other editor. Even if it was, I would not have gotten that much performance. Being a WordPress developer, my productivity increased a lot at that time.
So now, even though plain text editors are popular, I have to struggle with PHP support. For example, even after installing the PHP Intelephense extension, VS Code is not that fun and slow.
To solve this and almost PHPStorm, a new language server with all the features of the built-in language server is PHPantom.
It is a PHP language server built with Rust. Fast, open source, requires less memory and is supported by all editors. Not only that, it has official support in Claude and OpenCode which is a game changer.
Interestingly, this one has built-in Laravel support. Which is actually a great thing.
PHPantom is new to the market but it is going to be a great thing for PHP developers.