That timing aged terribly… she meant it as a joke, then real shots actually happened. 😅

This is a really refreshing take, and I think you're onto something important that often gets lost in the "PHP is dead" discourse. The stability argument is underrated — a language that evolves slowly and predictably is genuinely valuable in production environments, especially when you're maintaining a codebase that a team of mixed experience levels needs to work in together. The point about approachability resonates a lot. There's this tendency in developer culture to equate complexity with quality, but some of the most impactful software in the world runs on "boring" technology. PHP powering something like 40% of the web isn't a historical accident — it's because it gets the job done, and gets it done in a way that a wide range of developers can reason about. The "human scale" framing you used is particularly well put. Not every project needs a microservices architecture written in a language that requires a PhD to debug. Sometimes the right tool is the one your team actually understands deeply. Four years in, working on a growing product — that's not a consolation prize, that's a solid foundation. The developers who will still be relevant in 10 years aren't necessarily the ones chasing every new framework. They're often the ones who went deep on something, understood its patterns, and built things that actually shipped and lasted.

I got stuck in PHP and web development, and now I feel like there's no place for me anymore. I love the language, and all that's left is to keep developing small things just to help me maintain my programming skills. But I think I've been left behind.