PHP's syntax is not what's preventing you from writing large maintainable systems in it. Many of the more successful languages throughout history became success

PHP's syntax is not what's preventing you from writing large maintainable systems in it. Many of the more successful languages throughout history became successful BECAUSE they used a syntax that's superficially similar to something familiar. That's not to say that syntax doesn't matter, but semantics and pragmatics tends to matter more, despite Wadler's Law of Language Design stating that most people don't understand this.