I write javascript and php code for a living, and i don't think they're in the same class. Javascript is a nice language with warts tacked on, php however is not a nice language no matter how much you squint.

For example, javascript at its core has a string type that is treated like an array of characters in proper unicode, with a sane extensible method-based string api. PHP at its core by contrast only knows byte arrays and its string handling (global!) functions are basically useless for dealing with unicode (there's mbstring and intl, but too many people don't use those).