I guess some people just want to stick with what they know, and refuse to learn anything new.
That really depends on the use-case. If you need a batteries-included web framework, the top 3 that come to mind are Spring (Java), Django (Python) and Laravel (PHP).
And Laravel is a very good framework.
(I can't personally vouch for the claim but it's the best explanation I've heard for how such a reviled language has survived this long.)
I really don't have much issue with modern PHP either, it gets the job done and unlike Perl is still very much evolving.
It also has various magic for router links that do partial refreshes and working with classic (non-json) forms and whatnot. I use none of those, I'm all about json and useFetch() instead, and Inertia's pretty good about getting out of your way when you don't need it. It lets you write as much or as little in SPA style as you want, it's more or less your favorite JS framework as a view layer directly without having to interpose another view as a middleman (the middleman is there, but it's all implicit: you add the @inertia directive inside your <div id="app">, and that's it)