In 2012, PHP was already going through a renaissance. PHP 5.4 had come out with massive improvements and the release cycle for updates was accelerated. Composer

In 2012, PHP was already going through a renaissance. PHP 5.4 had come out with massive improvements and the release cycle for updates was accelerated. Composer and Laravel were released and people were not only building real apps with PHP like they always did, but they now had much better tooling, language features, and a more thriving ecosystem. I expect JS/TS's reputation to only grow more favorable over time. The pragmatic path of its evolution and the resources invested into improving it over the years have really made it shine.