A simple sniff test thats tried and true still holds. ANY programming language that requires you to use a framework to actually be productive fails the test.
PHP is doing very poorly in this realm. How many PHP websites out there are actually using a few libraries and the stdlib only? Not many.
Its frameworks, frameworks frameworks. In the PHP case its actually even worse, as there are a multitude of CMS sysytems that some people use. So its not even programming, but point and click and copypaste.
PHP has nothing to offer. They HAVE cleaned up some of the idiotic behaviour, but much of it still remains.
The stdlib is very poor, and having last i looked everything was still global. Some array functions like map/filter had arguments in the wrong order.
Unicode support is not there. Its a web language for gods sake! How about focus on that as a high priority?
PHP lacks a vision. What does PHP want to be/become? It looks like sometimes PHp steals Javalike features, implements them adhoc and badly, and then again sometimes more scripy features from JS.
The typ system is VERY mediocre. You really cant trust it, at least not with the stdlib.
The execution model of PHP is still living in the early 2000s. The web is real time, and PHP cant handle it without hacks, and even then you cant use any builtins like PDO (blocks thread) or any IO related feature.
Honestly, even if PHP today is ”better” than it was 10 years ago, what does it have to offer? There are multiple better languages for the problem PHP solves, and the other languages have ALSO improved in the last decade.
I cant see myself starting a new project with PHP, there is just too little it offers, and too much thats still broken, and wont ever be fixed because of BC that PHp tries so hard to keep.
PHP is doing very poorly in this realm. How many PHP websites out there are actually using a few libraries and the stdlib only? Not many.
Its frameworks, frameworks frameworks. In the PHP case its actually even worse, as there are a multitude of CMS sysytems that some people use. So its not even programming, but point and click and copypaste.
Thats not a tool i eant to use in 2021.