1. Off the top of my head: SSR of JS apps, performance, better security track record. It also fits in the modern architecture better: you can certainly write a rest API in PHP, but that's not typically what you would use PHP for... and if you're going to write a react, vue, etc app, you're likely writing an api also.

2. This is not my attitude at all. I've been programming since the 90s.. In the past I've maintained PHP apps for years; maintained a custom web framework for 17 years; I still have sites running that use jQuery.

It's certainly true the JS ecosystem has that mentality... but that does not mean every JS tool can be dismissed with that thinking. NodeJS is 11 years old... it's not a shiny new thing anymore.

> you can certainly write a rest API in PHP, but that's not typically what you would use PHP for

Definitely not true in my experience. lot's of people are writing REST apis in PHP.

> NodeJS is 11 years old... it's not a shiny new thing anymore.

I write Node stuff for work at $dayjob, and lot's of stuff is great. But it still has nothing that's close to competing with Rails/Django/Laravel in terms of completeness.

He's right. PHP is a templating engine. So if you're not going to render pages server side, it's not the main use case for php. I'm a php developer and that useless lonely <?php tag at the beginning of my json service files bothers me

"you can certainly write a rest API in PHP, but that's not typically what you would use PHP for..."

This just shows a lack of understanding of modern PHP. REST APIs are dead simple in PHP using Slim, Lumen, or Symfony REST.

I can think of a bunch typescript, performance, async