Honestly most of what you consider to be good or bad is a personal preference. But what I can say for certain is that framework-less modern PHP is 10x less ugly/complex and an order of magnitude more performant. There are a ton of new language constructs and features which puts it on par with, if not ahead of, most other languages.
Here are some of the most recent feature additions:
PHP kind of stagnated in terms of development with PHP 5.5 in 2013. It kind of went quiet. Along with an overshared article[0] on how bad and why PHP 5.4 was bad (which the community in all fairness overall agreed with, with some exceptions) PHP got a real bad reputation.
PHP 7.0 landed after key persons picked up the development of PHP again, and while progress was slow it really took off from here.
It seems like the biggest pain for the entire community is the lack of generics. There's a lengthy explanation as to why it's so difficult to achieve in PHP, but overall the features since 7.0 added has really added some modern value compared to peer languages.
A lengthy list of additions is easiest generated by some GPT provider. But the community painpoint is generics.
