[WalterGR]

I am genuinely curious of what specific problems you see in PHP and what are the specific issues with the language.

There are so, so many. Here are some good references:

http://phpsadness.com/

https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

Disclaimer: I earn my income from a project largely written in PHP.