A lot of projects do a rewrite from PHP to Ruby on Rails or some equivalent migration. What the project really needs is a rewrite/refactor/cleanup however it's

A lot of projects do a rewrite from PHP to Ruby on Rails or some equivalent migration. What the project really needs is a rewrite/refactor/cleanup however it's much easier to frame that in the context of going to a "better" choice than it is explaining it just needs a rewrite with better practices/engineers (ie maybe more and easier tests or using the prior prior/current architectural lessons to create a better architecture). The reality is one could just rewrite it in the original language/stack but that is apparently harder to sell even though it's less risky. So if the first language/stack is less respected, it makes it easier to sell that rewrite to non-technical/management. Thus PHP is a great choice for the first stack. The one huge trap here is if the second team isn't experienced enough in the holy grail (next) stack. I've seen that and been relieved to walk away from those projects/companies.