The Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP stack was the hotness about a decade ago, so that's the kind of hosting that was most available. Shared hosting was much more popula

The Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP stack was the hotness about a decade ago, so that's the kind of hosting that was most available. Shared hosting was much more popular (physical hosting was more expensive, VMs were expensive and new, and tooling was worse). In 2025 someone might ask why $oldStack developers don't always do $newHotness. It's often the timing of popularity that tools grow together. This is just apocrypha, but MySQL was popular during the rise of PHP because MySQL was more performant on small databases on developer workstations.