[paulriddle]

Obviously Javascript, Ruby, Golang, Python.

Javascript has become a nice language. You can't avoid it in webdev. Rich ecosystem. Languages like Typescript, Elm, Purescript, etc. are close.

Ruby is very practical, has everything, very consistent and clean. PHP is not consistent and not clean.

Golang is fast and the simplest language that is actually used in the industry. It is dramatically simpler than C. It is the fastest.

Python is like Ruby, but even more practical because it has ML and math, whereas Ruby does not.

PHP has no place in this world.

[exceptione]

PHP is very much like Java, only being dynamically interpreted. Symfony is a very high quality framework, with which can build serious applications.

Python is surely nice looking, but as it allows redefinition of everything at runtime, it is impossible to optimize at compile time. I think PHP, with the recent type strictness functionality, is better positioned for making way to new developments like meaningfull code analysis, (compile time) optimizations and performant JIT compilers. Python is too dynamic for that, unfortunately. The same holds for JavaScript.

I don't know Ruby well, but I know it is also slow.

The biggest problem with PHP is that it standards library has inconsistent naming. The syntax is very much Java-like. If PHP would shove the standard library into `LegacyPrelude` (and have it automatically loaded like Haskell) it could improve on that as well. This problem is not as fundamental as the other problems in my opinion, although still requiring a major effort to slowly turn to a new `Prelude`.

[paulriddle]

The biggest problem with PHP is that a lot of smart people don't want to work with it for whatever reason, and you really want these smart people. To succeed you have to have a good team. Difficult to assemble one with PHP as your language.

If you use PHP you are going to lose. The world has moved on. Remember that you are not the only game in town. Good engineers have opportunities in Python, Javascript, Ruby, Rust, Golang, whatever. These languages have better reputation, better communities, they are more exciting. PHP might have become better but it's too late. It wasn't late for Javascript, but it is late for PHP.