There is a lot of good things to be said about PHP. Personally, I do not go along with the typical critique about it. Which usually points out edge cases of PHP's behavior which never have been a problem for me in real life.
At Gnod, we are heavily invested in PHP. And it continues to look like that was a good choice.
What I would like to see discussed more is PHP's decision of not having an import system but to instead use a "namespace" directive in included files. This puts the burden of avoiding name conflicts on the included file rather then on the including file. While in Python and Javascript it is the other way round. Which in my experience makes things more logical and requires less tooling for an enjoyable coding experience.
At Gnod, we are heavily invested in PHP. And it continues to look like that was a good choice.
What I would like to see discussed more is PHP's decision of not having an import system but to instead use a "namespace" directive in included files. This puts the burden of avoiding name conflicts on the included file rather then on the including file. While in Python and Javascript it is the other way round. Which in my experience makes things more logical and requires less tooling for an enjoyable coding experience.