It still has many of the same problems old PHP has. More speed is always great, but speed wasn't PHP's major issue. It's still mired in an interpreter that has

It still has many of the same problems old PHP has. More speed is always great, but speed wasn't PHP's major issue. It's still mired in an interpreter that has a lot of issues with more abstract/higher level stuff (though I will say that's getting far better), and a team that doesn't embrace BC breaks as much as they should (my opinion - the stdlib sucks). Extensions have always been PHP's strong point, but some newer stuff isn't as supported as well as it is in Python or Node because of PHP's lack of good async code. Overall it's a step in the right direction, but PHP needs more big changes.