Python isn't a framework, but in contrast to Pythom, PHP made some bad decisions that are hard to roll back, the biggest being cramming hundreds of inconsistently named standard library functions into the default namespace. PHP can be very productive but I think it's fair to day it was designed a lot less intentionally than many languages.

PHP is very guilty of cramming hundreds of inconsistently named standard library functions into the default namespace, but I wasn't aware of Python doing this?

Wrote the opposite of what I meant. Thanks for pointing it out while I can still edit :)

Sure, Django/Python is a plenty good example. Python manages to be older than most of its competitors while still feeling like its cutting edge. Django is hard to beat in all but speed. What about newer stuff like Elixir/Phoenix, or even Node/Express or Ruby/Rails.

That said, I'm not even saying PHP is bad, but this article doesn't convince me why I'd pick PHP over literally anything else.

Saying that Python 2 & 3 use a completely different syntax is a pretty gross overstatement.