As compile-to-JS has matured, many of us have switched to things like TypeScript. That kinda ruins your glib analogy.
The improvements in both the language/community plus how people are using JS since The Good Parts was quite a significant improvement.
But people largely went through that whole process because of the ubiquity of browsers not because JS was a good idea. There are so many better alternatives on the server side for web, I don’t see the point in PHP going through that whole renovation unless it’s to hire more and cheaper developers.
and may be being cheaper to hire is a bigger importance than you'd care to admit. After all, the person paying the bills wants it to be as low as possible whilst still achieving the result. And they call the shots.
PHP developers are cheap because in general they're very junior. Junior Javascript developers are cheap too.
But Javascript is compiled in the browser, by many browsers, and so is hard to nail down an environment.
PHP runs on the server which is pretty much a fixed environment. It has more options to it yet it feels like it hasn't made use of it.