Pretty much, I've seen PHP powering traditional companies with revenue in the hundreds of millions (approach billions).
Basically the only two technologies I touch these days are rails and php. I'm not filtering out other tech stacks, these two are just absolutely dominant for this type of company.
The place I'm thinking off that I know uses PHP for everything is a bricks and mortar retailer/manufacturer, I think last time I looked their revenue was ~£500m a year.
Their software was however awful in the worst ways :).
> At least here in Europe the word Backend Developer is basically synonymous with PHP Developer.
Here in Norway backend mostly means JVM or dotNet it seems. Last I touched a PHP installation that wasn't a prototype or a blog or something was in the spring of 2009.
That said: In my opinion PHP has been massively underrated in HN circles.
Isn't that still the case?
At least here in Europe the word Backend Developer is basically synonymous with PHP Developer.
Every other language for backend development is pretty niche. Sure there is Java (and C#) for the enterprise but that was already there back then. Ruby had a good run but modern PHP with frameworks like Laravel could reclaim most productivity benefits so not that fierce of a competition. JS with node, sure but I mostly hear it in the context of micro services which is the opposite of wanting to get something done.
> PHP barely ages - from 1999 or 2010 or 2020, it looks similar and works fine.
Yes but no. PHP takes stability and backwards compatibility quite seriously but the language and culture around it has changed tremendously. The wild west days are long gone, it has gotten much more professional and mature while adding many modern language features.