>And rightly so. Frankly, I think the only reason PHP keeps floating on is the inertia it has. All the investment in tools, existing codebase and developer experience are what keep it going, not language merits.

Considering the alternatives PHP is not bad at all. It's not like Python or Ruby are some pinnacle of language design.

It's main BS is a polluted default namespace, incosistent function naming, and a few semantic inconsistencies. It's not like any other language doesn't have its share of BS.

Plus what it lacks (a proper AST etc) it's getting. It has been improving ever since 5.0, and fast. Including getting a vast speed increase with 7 that will leave Python and co in the dust.

Well, it has closures, interfaces, dead easy reflection, traits, namespaces, etc etc, speaks to tons of systems, includes tons of batteries, has a great dependency manager, is dead easy to deploy, has a huge ecosystem and good tooling, etc.