PHP was never in fashion. In the beginning it wasn't as powerful as Perl. Then it was looked upon as not serious compared to java or hobbist by the business asp crowd. At one point because of a facebook movie it was in fashion for a year but that created a I hate php backlash. Php has changed so much I'm seeing people rediscover it.

Remember java was cool or mongodb or node or ruby on rails. It feels like go is becoming less cool. I wonder what next year will bring? Perhaps php will be rediscovered when SV changes once again.