I’m going to try to offer a positive take from a non-PHP-fan perspective: yes it’s obvious both from vaguely checking in on the language’s progress and from the article’s presentation that PHP has made considerable strides. It’s impressive how much, over that time, it’s become less insular and much more readily adopted similar improvements to similar languages. The object over time, for example, more and more closely resembles TypeScript, and that’s a good thing.

I haven’t worked in PHP for I don’t know how many years, and I probably still have an unfair negative reaction to it. It has a strange cultural idiosyncrasy I find more limiting than anything about the language itself. But I’m happy to see it evolve and I’m happy to see it evolve alongside other technologies I work with more readily.