If you're just now looking into xdebug, how could you know the differences or make a valid comparison? For one, you can remote debug way easier than with JVM debuggers. For the 80% use case it is just as easy/just as useful. The JVM debugging tools provide way more functionality and for local debugging are just there and ready to use in a way xdebug isn't. But frankly, the fact that you're JUST looking into xdebug makes me question whether or not people should be paying you to write PHP.

I have kids fresh out of college that work for me that use xdebug all day every day, remote, over Vagrant VMs, and local with different IDEs. This is a solved issue- you clearly are working in a smelly codebase, don't have the 'advanced' PHP skills you think you do, and seem to think that PHP is awful because the other cool kids said so.