Because the alternatives is actually not good, it just a fallacy.
There will always be something negative regardless of what you pick, problem is to decide what your core values are when writing different types of software. If you don't, you are just comparing apples to oranges.
When it comes to PHP, core values are usually things that has to do with tooling, server architecture & deployment, not much the language (syntax, expressions, lambdas, classes etc) it self, except maybe it is easy to learn & use.
This means that developers who comes from a background of that the language itself is the most important part of a project will most of the time just get confused what PHP is about.
There will always be something negative regardless of what you pick, problem is to decide what your core values are when writing different types of software. If you don't, you are just comparing apples to oranges.
When it comes to PHP, core values are usually things that has to do with tooling, server architecture & deployment, not much the language (syntax, expressions, lambdas, classes etc) it self, except maybe it is easy to learn & use.
This means that developers who comes from a background of that the language itself is the most important part of a project will most of the time just get confused what PHP is about.