IMHO, the biggest reason to use a language like Node when you want to do async programming is that for any random library you choose there's a 98% chance that it properly supports async as well and won't block on you. For better or worse async is pervasive in the ecosystem. Even in good languages like Python that have (allegedly; I've not used them) good async frameworks, most libraries will block as it's the normal I/O mode for the language, which really limits what you can use. I can't imagine the situation will be any better in PHP.