It seems like doubling down is the standard thing to do. Here's a video about how Instagram bugs engineers to do fewer string manipulations in Python instead of using a faster language https://youtu.be/hnpzNAPiC0E
Okay. Get over it.
Python is fine. Threads are fine. Go is fine. Clojure is fine. Java is fine. PHP is ... okay I won't go that far. :)
You fix the problem when the cost required to fix the problem is finally less than the opportunity cost of fixing something else.
I've mainly worked at companies that would be bankrupt if they used Python the way Instagram does.
You need a market. You need paying customers. You need cashflow. You need features. You need a business plan.
You don't need scaling. Ever. To first, second and third order approximations.
Your company has a higher probability of bankruptcy than needing scaling.
PHP has grown up a lot over the last ten years.
It's too stringly-typed for my tastes, seems like a lot of errors you can make will only be caught at runtime.
It's a resounding no from me. If you're stuck with PHP, sure, this beats the WordPress style of...well...I can't really find words to describe how bad it is..., but it's still miles behind anything else. It full of strings and other things that you just have to memorize with IDE integration even with specialised extensions still worse than other languages with standard IDEs.
'gender' => 'in:male,female,other'
'gender' => Rule::in(['male', 'female', 'other'])
Modern PHP is pushing for type-safety (via type-hinting) and Laravel is following this direction as well.