I think there is kind of a big difference though in that you don't have to compile php to execute scripts vs the languages you named. It's often just a lot fast

I think there is kind of a big difference though in that you don't have to compile php to execute scripts vs the languages you named. It's often just a lot faster to add a single loc to dump output to the page and immediately rerun the script and get immediate output. Debuggers are great, but not needed for the more simple bugs, which tend to be most common. If php devs had to wait a few minutes (or longer) to compile first, just dumping the output wouldn't be an efficient option. Not all bugs need tracing and stepping, but when they do it's great to be able to use the actual debugger.