This is a preemptive plea for people who last wrote PHP in 2012 not to opine on what writing PHP is like in 2025. It is not a hammer with two claws. It’s a modern language with types and tooling and package management.
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There was a lot of what people call modern PHP, basically just without the types. I'd say the PHP 4 days are the darker ages that most people reference, but maybe your experience in 2012 was like 2007ish. (TLDR: If you found it fine in 2012 it's probably still fine in 2025, but I don't see the huge wins. I stopped using it for reasons other than "dislike").