As I've said here (in a reply to a reply to your comment) -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850539 PHP is

As I've said here (in a reply to a reply to your comment) -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850539 PHP is web-first, built for the web, and it does it's job well for that purpose. In the years before this boom of SaaS web apps and platforms, the only thing you needed on the web, in almost all cases, was some sort of CMS. PHP was traditionally used for CMS', because that's what was needed (and still is) on the web. It's not a glamorous job, but those CRM, ERP, and other data systems are what power the modern business world. And a large number is written in PHP. Case in point: Serbia's largest government-owned telco "Telekom Srbija" used to use a CRM system written in ASP.NET with WPF client software. In January 2019. they started to migrate off of that solution onto a web based platform written in PHP. It's still kind-of in progress, but I think it will bring them more success. SBB, Serbia's largest alternative telco, has been using that same PHP-based solution for years, and has a smooth customer acquisition process, because it can be done from anywhere due to the web UI. Of course, you can have a Web UI with any other language, but PHP is web native and isn't any worse than other languages, but may provide some advantages. Also, before nodejs was invented, the only truly accessible (as in - simple to develop in, with a tolerant dev environment) language was PHP, if you wanted to do web and web only. There was (and is) Python, Ruby, Java, etc., but they were never easy to use, manage and deploy. Most of the new tools we take for granted weren't available in, i.e. 2005., when the standard dev procedure was to upload files via FTP for a large amount of the world. And lastly, nowdays, I don't think PHP is any worse than other scripting languages for web usage, especially for CRUD information system UIs. And if you need more than it offers, you will find luck only in .NET [Core] or Java, not in Node or Python. Ironically, the company I work for is strictly a no-PHP shop, and does no PHP projects for clients, except half of the Intranet that spans many countries (Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, USA, Netherlands, Germany, Phillipines, UAE, etc.) and management systems are written in PHP. It's just useful for the task, and there's no need to change it, or waste money on something that works. The company is old-ish (from 1998.) but hasn't outgrown the systems (yet). I said ironically because I really like PHP, but do .NET with Oracle at work.