[PHP lacks] ability to abstract the database in an OO way I would dispute that this is a requirement for a good language. Object/relational impedance mismatch

[PHP lacks] ability to abstract the database in an OO way I would dispute that this is a requirement for a good language. Object/relational impedance mismatch is a well known issue. It doesn't matter in some apps, but it does in others. The ability to do database queries by means other than manipulating SQL as strings is kind of useful though. most web apps don't use MySQL, templating, or Apache these days There's some syntactic ambiguity in this statement. Are you saying that most web apps don't use any of those anymore? I think even in the world of brand new web startups, you'll find a majority using at least one of those.