I've spent the last 10 years working for a succession of companies that used PHP yet have never worked on WordPress and I doubt I ever will.

If you're in the tech startup bubble it's easy to come to the conclusion that Python, Ruby and an assortment of minority interest languages with rabidly toxic fanbases rule the roost, but outside of that bubble PHP, C# and Java are quietly running the world.

Laravel is doing just as much to keep it alive.

PHP is still great for a lot of things, and as long as most hosting companies offer it pre-installed it will stay, even without WordPress.

If I want to create a quick script, I can just create a file directly on the server and see the result live, without having to compile anything or even restart the server. If I want to move it to a different server, I just copy-paste the contents of the file.

PHP is 80% of all websites on the Internet. WordPress is 50%. There is another 30% in between.