Are you aware of what the PHP ecosystem provides? There is some pretty great stuff in PHP land.
2 of my favorites are https://getcomposer.org/ and https://laravel.com/
2 of my favorites are https://getcomposer.org/ and https://laravel.com/
PHP is catching up to what other languages have enjoyed as a given for over a decade. It's very confused. There's been absolutely zero effort to overhaul the core PHP API which is, on the whole, absolute junk. Frameworks like Laravel do their utmost to insulate you from having to use it too much for the ugly things.
As an example of what could happen, JavaScript has gone from this ugly, useless language that would crash your browser if used too much to something that's now widely deployed and powers significant web properties both client-side and server. The improvements to the language have been dramatic, ES6 code is words apart from JavaScript 1.
In another 5 years JavaScript will hit another milestone, Java will evolve, and PHP will still be PHP.
If you were involved with the internals team at all, you would know this is not true.
Was released in 2013.
> Laravel is a "at least it's not garbage" framework.
How many PHP frameworks do you actually know?
> Find something in an array?
One function call(PHP 4 >=): http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-search.php
> PHP is catching up to what other languages have enjoyed as a given for over a decade.
Can you list the things that Java and JavaScript had for over a decade before PHP?
> which is, on the whole, absolute junk.
Do you have proof of this?
> Frameworks like Laravel do their utmost to insulate you from having to use it too much for the ugly things.
Just like frameworks in any other languages.
> JavaScript has gone from this ugly, useless language that would crash your browser
Have you seen the amount of JavaScript modern JS frameworks generate? We are now in the megabytes.
> deployed and powers significant web properties both client-side and server
PHP powers the worlds biggest social network, what's your point?
> The improvements to the language have been dramatic, ES6 code is words apart from JavaScript 1.
There was also a decade of inactivity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript#Versions
You have to use transpilers if you are planning on running it in the popular browsers even for ES6.
Even the latest versions of JS retain the brain damage from older versions(for backwards compatibility).
> In another 5 years JavaScript will hit another milestone, Java will evolve, and PHP will still be PHP.
It took JS more than a decade for it to get support for classes, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Edit: that's not to refute what you've said or anything.
Composer and the PSR initiatives have totally changed the feel of working in this ecosystem for the better.