I appreciate the detailed response to my question. But... > as a general purpose language there are just better options I don't think PHP ever pretends or tri

I appreciate the detailed response to my question. But... > as a general purpose language there are just better options I don't think PHP ever pretends or tries to be a general purpose language or cutting edge. But I think to say it hasn't evolved is a bit misleading. PHP has always been a domain specific language. It is designed to do one thing well: stateless request oriented applications with strong ability to scale horizontally. And for that, it does pretty well.