While developing, there’s often a confusion between a core PHP developer and a
vanilla/plain PHP developer. This article will explain a difference between these terms
to avoid further confusion.
Core PHP describes the main engine of the PHP language itself and doesn’t mean
developing something with the PHP language directly. So a core PHP
developer writes C code and extends the PHP core
or develops PHP extensions,
which are written in C programming language. Often times, core PHP is referred to
as PHP internals also.
A vanilla PHP developer or plain PHP developer is developing an application using the PHP language
without any 3rd party libraries or frameworks. So the vanilla developer actually
uses the language used in the name.
As long as you are writing PHP code, you are a vanilla or plain PHP developer. If you are
however writing on the PHP core itself, you can be considered a core PHP developer.
