The people who invested "too much" in it don't have to defend it. They'll simply continue using it. They'll enjoy the new functionality. If I make millions upon millions of revenue with a PHP application, I don't care if tech nerds dislike the syntax used to build it.

Syntax is very far down the list of problems with PHP

> list of problems with PHP

(Here we go again.) Such us?

Are you productive in any of the following? C#, Ruby, Rust, Elixir, Typescript (or even Haskell)

If not, you're just proving my original point. It's hard to see the problems of a language if you are only productive in that language. I can start pointing out flaws in PHP, and you can claim that those flaws don't matter. Until you increase the number of languages in your repertoire, our discussion about the flaws of PHP won't be constructive.

I think arguments against PHP could be make against many other languages, ie: Javascript or python. But they are not done as much and I think this indicates that people make those arguments in bad faith.

If we say once a better language comes along, we should say that the old language is shit and should die, then sure keep doing that. But looking at the languages that you have listed above, none of them are dynamically type I belive although not familiar with a couple of them. For some small projects people might prefer dynamic typing, or if you are prototyping something.

Also the amount of libraries, frameworks and projects already written PHP is massive so if someone wants to do something fast, why limit people's choices by trying to convince everyone that the language is shit instead of letting people decide for themselves? It just feels like a witch hunt to me.

Are you productive in any other language than PHP?

Alright, if that's the filter people need to pass before you listen to their arguments then I'll tell you the list of languages I am productive in:

Javascript, PHP, Haskell, Rust, C++ and LISP. I'm familiar with the benefits and drawbacks of all of them and I don't see how any of them replaces PHP

I dislike the patronising tone of your comment. If your first assumption is that the interlocutor is monolingual, that makes me think you are used to a quite unsophisticated company.

> I can start pointing out flaws in PHP, and you can claim that those flaws don't matter.

It is context-dependent. For some jobs it is a poor choice, for others - including most of web application back-end development - pretty much none of its so-called flaws actually matter.

And even those problems are very far down the line if the business logic results in the expected revenue.

Finding talented developers that want to work on your codebase is a factor in your example. More and more developers are realising they don't want to work with PHP. How much revenue will you get without developers?

Go ahead, keep using PHP for your existing multi million dollar product. But using PHP for new projects is not wise.

Recruiting emails from companies that use PHP go straight to trash. Wouldn't even consider it, and I know I'm not alone.

PHP shops won't attract from the same pool of talent. It's not that there aren't good PHP developers, it's that there are so many brilliant engineers that are never going to consider such work.

Languages matter.

Good for you but I don't hire language developers for my company. I hire developers who care about solving problems, no disrespect meant to you. Today it's PHP, tomorrow we could do Golang etc etc. Who cares. When I interview a developer, I pay attention to the fact if they are too obsessed with a certain language instead of real problem solving. My 2 cents.

The developers care.

We can agree to disagree. Plenty of great developers work with PHP.

Using PHP is a great way to keep snobby developers at bay.

I use PHP for scripting in Windows, a saner language is not needed for that, in many ways PHP is saner than scripting options included in Windows. It is a good enough product for that job. I can also quickly create a few minimalistic web pages to simplify some of my work, the other languages are an overkill in most of my use cases. There are other reasons to use PHP than what you listed.