[unscaled]

All true. But OP was never trying to argue that PHP is more complex than other language, but instead claimed that once you get to the point of requiring complexity, PHP doesn't get to have the "it's braindead simple" advantage anymore. To quote:

--- Disputes like “Why do I need PHP if there’s Java?” have become more frequent nowadays. I don’t know who’s in the right, Holly Wars are tricky. But each dispute has an argument in favor of PHP — it’s easy for beginners. To my mind, this argument isn’t valid anymore, which is exactly what I was trying to say in this article. A novice programmer will have to learn lots of new things, as well as write tons of configs: frameworks (very similar to java frameworks), databases, linux, shminux, JavaScript with all its baggage, http-protocol, various tooling and many more. Even if it’s not SPA.