[throwaway777555]

My experience has been the opposite. I work in a PHP shop and with each new version update, a handful of us are excited about the new changes that get made to the language. Our DevOps team has been on top of keeping our servers running the latest production-ready versions of PHP. So many of the refinements are a welcome change. I'm eager for stronger type hinting and other features that are still coming down the pipe.

[Lazare]

No, that's our experience too. We're excited by the changes, eager for each new release, and enjoy being able to write solid code without the language getting in the way (much). When 8.0 drops we'll probably have cake.

...the issue is the community, and (especially) the pool of applicants we get. It may be different where you are, but around here you advertise for a "senior backend dev", and you get a bunch of people with solid experience in, mostly, Python showing up, with maybe a sprinkling of .NET and Java. (Two of the biggest IT employers in town use Python, which skews things a bit, I know.) But you advertise for a "senior PHP dev", and you get all sorts, but (so far) no one we'd consider hiring. (Let me put it this way: The next time one of the "PHP devs" we shortlist turns out to have ever written a functioning unit test will be the first time. And these are people with years of experience, applying for a senior role...)