For starters a simple websocket server cant be built in traditional PHP. It will need some sort of hack like reactphp, and then you throw out all the stdlib i/o

For starters a simple websocket server cant be built in traditional PHP. It will need some sort of hack like reactphp, and then you throw out all the stdlib i/o functionality. In 2022 (soon 2023) "it runs everywhere" does not matter. Who deploys on a shared hosting service anymore? I did not even know they existed anymore. With docker you can deploy any kind of exotic stack and "it will just work". PHP is not fast, a stock Laravel/Symfony app has poor req/sec benchmarks compared to almost anything else out there. Also the language still has all the warts it did in PHP5. Eg array_map/filter etc param order, no real unicode support, poor namespacing etc etc. Its just an overall bad development experience.