[velmu]

PHP is not perfect, but there has been definite improvement. Tooling is now pretty good with PHPStorm (from JetBrains), Composer is a fine dependency/packet manager and a framework like Symfony sets good guidelines and stability for development.

In addition eCommerce and Content Management System tools and ecosystems are still by far the most popular out there. After years of Node.js hype there is still nothing that rivals WordPress in terms of flexibility and ease of use. Same goes for Magento on the eCommerce end. Not that WP or Magento are good examples of high quality codebases.

All that said, there are no longer arguments why you would use PHP specifically. In that sense it has lost it's edge and you can use any number of languages for developing CRUD apps for the web. But if you need to get shit done, there is nothing wrong with PHP and your customers couldn't care less.