That's not to say PHP isn't been overcomplicating itself & hasn't fully embraced why it's so succesfull and improved that part: it's easy & practical.
How can it be even easier? For instance even simpler hosting? With things like vercel, and app engine PHP isn't necessarily the simplest choice in hosting sites anymore.
A Vercel for PHP would be awesome.
Do you have specific examples for things where PHP has been overcomplicating itself? Most complex things seem to actually make things easier for newbies (e.g. typing can be a great help).
Because it was very accessible for people to get into it without being you know, a 10 year programming veteran at least.
Now all those newbies are out creating 400 npm dependency projects heh
Sure. Wouldn't it be nice to allow these people to write better code without having to change their language?
Mind you, the "old ways" still work - you can still write a few lines, upload it, boom it works. Projects around PHP might have developed different ways of working, but that's because of problems in the old way - and that's not a fault of PHP, it's a plus that things move in a more maintainable and type-safe direction. You even reap some benefits when doing a "write a few lines, upload it, boom it works" workflow.