PHP on its own was more of a templating system plus arbitrary code when I used it. Django and ASP.NET have ORMs and templating systems. Lots of people love ORM

PHP on its own was more of a templating system plus arbitrary code when I used it. Django and ASP.NET have ORMs and templating systems. Lots of people love ORMs although I’ve found complex queries slow with a hefty object model system, to the point where I’d rather write parameterised sql queries than work with a ORM optimization strategy. The templating system is nice although these days I mostly use javascript talking to json endpoints, with nearly zero need for a templating system. Honestly when your need is: “javascript talks to endpoint and endpoint talks to database” I don’t see a greater need than python, nodejs, golang or whatever language you prefer plus a couple of libraries. Most server frameworks add more stuff you probably don’t need, unless you can’t work without an integrated ORM.