I'm continually amazed that PDF has survived this long while so many other technologies have died. Not only is it a constant vulnerability, but it's not even good at its job. Absolutely miserable UX and DX.

I disagree. PHP had a wonderful DX. Deploying a website literally meant connecting to the server over FTP, and drag-n-dropping your PHP files. Same for updates. Oh, and back then, IIRC even Windows Explorer supported FTP. It was literally just "write the URL, drop the files". How do you deploy a Node webapp? A python webapp? How do you make sure it stays up? Do you expose is directly or behind a nginx?

PHP won exactly because it had a wonderful DX.

They're talking about PDFs, not PHP.

Oh, I must have read the comment too early in the morning and I cannot edit it anymore, apologizes. I completely agree about the PDF developer experience.

And I agree with your statements on PHP, to a certain extend! I was born somewhere between ‘no php’ and ‘everyone hates php’. In between those years I spun up crazy dynamic websites with a single file while others were still installing Python deps. I think php got to large for its own good, but loved those earlier years.