Any mention of PHP's merits at this point is going to start a flame war. It's pretty easy to be a terrible developer with it. JS/Node can allow you to be just as bad of a developer. The key to being good and getting a good start is to learn the fundamentals of whatever language you choose. Don't pick a framework and definitely don't rely on one without knowing a language. Frameworks come and go. I personally like Python but mostly use PHP in my day job due to it being the company standard for web apps. It works just fine for the company's needs. Most people can learn the basics of a language in a day so it may be worth running through a few tutorials in a few different languages to see if there is something that suits you. In my opinion it's good to have a toolbox of languages because sometimes a certain language is just better than others at different things.

I use Laravel and PHP for my job at a trendy start up. We use it to spit out JSON. I have no complaints, it's an absolutely fantastic framework - good support for the set of actions common to most web apps via the community and libraries.

Laravel is a lot of fun and has a lot of helpful opinions. Sometimes you outgrow it, but generally it covers like 90% of use cases.

If you use Laravel and not raw PHP, you'll be fine.

PHP is career killer. Its makes you worse developer, confine you as web developer and have poorly paid jobs.