Also, if you're talking about a single-file project, you can do that in Java, too, using plain old javac. It's not quite as simple as dropping a file on a server (but it's really damn close- first run javac, THEN plop the file on the server).
But you're fooling yourself if you think you don't have to do any setup to get a publicly facing PHP app to work. If you don't configure your Apache or Nginx or fiddle with your .htaccess junk, then you're not actually doing anything. So it's not fair to complain about "xml files crap" for Java and not discuss the equivalent for PHP, which is fiddling with php.ini and installing php_mod and configuring that in your Apache or whatever.
I am currently working on a Kotlin backend project and I haven't touched any XML. I've done plenty of Java/Kotlin and PHP.
A lot of the tooling can abstract you from the brunt of it.
Have you ever played around with Kotlin?
Never say never my friend, as someone who has used PHP in the past I prefer Java by far. The streams concept/interface they have in Java is really cool.
Java: the amount of files and java-knowledge and xml files crap one has to go through... No thanks.. PHP might not be perfect ! But it's NOTHING like java.