PHP 8.5

PHP should REALLY focus on getting the core stuff in shape.

Its still so annoying that you have to use mb_real_uppercase($name) for unicode. The other gripe is that the stdlib is SO messy. With PHP 5.3 they had a once in a lifetime opportunity to cleanup the stdlib and introduce a new namespaced API for builtins, and optionally introduce a uniform function call syntax:

    "foo"->strtoupper();

Whenever doing PHP the time for concurrency will come sooner or later. Having no way of doing ANY concurrency is a letdown. The Fiber API does nothing on its own, and you are forced to use some third party runtime, that is usually a non-starter for legacy projects.

PHP has come a long way from the PHP 4.0 era, but is still lacking in multiple areas, and i dont see it being a pick for greenfield projects in 2025.

Yeah, the core ergonomics is significantly lagging behind most other backend languages despite improvements in some areas. I even wrote an article https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-06-12/my-honest-opinion-ab... .

As for concurrency/async, it's possible to do requests in parallel with curl_multi_*. Other async/prallel things are also possible, but tend to be more complicated compared to JS or other languages with promise and async support.

> i dont see it being a pick for greenfield projects in 2025

You don't see it because you're not looking. There are many Laravel jobs in my area. If you think that is only for Legacy projects, might be mistaken.