So you were actually impressed with this project, but instead of congratulating the team you decide to rehash old out-dated arguments and try to bash PHP.
Do you realize this sort of thing is no longer a reflection on the language (folks are immune to it). For people who want to hate just to hate, why are you here on HN? Seriously, go find a subreddit to flame on.
You're reading into what I said in a very negative way, and extracting incorrect signals in the process. I was very clear in saying that if you are a PHP expert, you should definitely continue to develop with PHP.
It should not be negative to ask why someone might choose a PHP framework given so many other options.
I do find it amazing how little credit Rails gets from other framework communities given how many of their features are directly lifted from concepts that Rails originated or popularized. It's possible that Laravel developers don't know migrations came from Rails, for example.
Anyhow, if you're asking about my opinion, personally... don't confuse hate with pity. I've had to make some changes to a Laravel backend for a client project lately, and if you honestly believe that it's nicer to work with than Rails, we have different working definitions of nice.
It's your writing tone, man, tone it down. Your question "why voluntarily choose PHP for a greenfield project in 2019?" was enough, but you followed it with direct criticism. Communication self-help books would be a nice-read
Do you realize this sort of thing is no longer a reflection on the language (folks are immune to it). For people who want to hate just to hate, why are you here on HN? Seriously, go find a subreddit to flame on.