You definitely have a point that we are getting further and further abstracted away from the lower level workings. And perhaps we lost something along the way.

You definitely have a point that we are getting further and further abstracted away from the lower level workings. And perhaps we lost something along the way. I just don't think what we lost is the UX, the dynamicity gap that you alluded to in the article. From my experience UX is crucial for beginners, and if PHP truly had a better UX for simply apps and for beginners, it would not have dwindled so much in popularity