You're right that I was simplifying the Express bit (or maybe a lot), but let me try to make that part a bit more clear. You can have a top-level node.js file t

You're right that I was simplifying the Express bit (or maybe a lot), but let me try to make that part a bit more clear. You can have a top-level node.js file that uses Express and imports all files in a given folder as routes. Then you can get the "putting files in directories, copying files around, making backup copies of files, and so on". It will take a bit more elbow grease to get the "without ever taking their entire site down with a parse error at startup", but still possible. And if a host like GoDaddy wanted to have this as a preconfiguration on their servers, they could. My point was that the UX that you are describing, is possible in any framework or language, given the right infrastructure pre-installed on the web server (which you have for PHP). So it's less about PHP not being popular, and more about this UX not being as popular anymore. My guess for the reason, is that even beginners find the modern workflows and popular hosting options intuitive and easy to use.