It's because PHP isn't simple anymore. It requires an IDE, it's likely using a framework (at least Laravel seems relatively sanely designed), and everyone wants

It's because PHP isn't simple anymore. It requires an IDE, it's likely using a framework (at least Laravel seems relatively sanely designed), and everyone wants to make it contain all the features (and most importantly syntaxes) of all their favorite other languages. If you're using an IDE already pretty much any language could be the same.