[handrous]

PHP is the more recent one. Folks who worked in PHP but got out at the right time look at all the low-paying PHP jobs (and there are lots of them!) and see mostly-PHP-experience job candidates dismissed out of hand for higher-paying jobs that would offer work experience outside PHP and think "there but for the grace of God, go I".

[joelbluminator]

PHP has declined but its by no means a dead or dying tech. Pay should be good in the good companies (Slack? MessageBird? I am sure there are some big names I dont follow the PHP world that much). What I am saying is that even declining tech can provide stable income for decades. Perl is a different story though. I dont know if the Perl people can still get jobs writing Perl.

[handrous]

Oh no, it's not dying—there's a ton of PHP work out there—it's just that most of the PHP dev market is very stagnant, wage-wise, outside a handful of companies, in a way that most languages in wide use are not. There's also a real stigma that goes along with still being mostly a PHP person these days, I've noticed. (I was one, like... 9 or 10 years ago)