> Can someone explain why I'm wrong about this because when ever I tell any of my Java / Node colleagues that I love PHP they tend to roll their eyes.
You're not wrong so much as out of fashion.
It's very important to recognize how much industry trends are driven by fashion. But being fashionable also makes an ecosystem good. Well, at least makes it better. For certain definitions of better. Lots of development attention that means there's probably a highly visible project building exactly the bells and whistles that will garner praise and more attention for the ecosystem.
You can make your slow, measured, careful decisions about tech to use. But webdev is full of YOLO projects too. Churn and fashion are always going to be at your door.
I was talking to a colleague recently and he said PHP died when senior devs were no longer able to say, "we're building it in PHP" and be taken seriously. I think there's truth in that.
I also think it's interesting how many TS advocates seem to have popped up in this thread. I find Java to be a lovely language and I think it's fair to say generally most developers agree Java is a well designed language with a mature ecosystem backing it, but I've never met a passionate Java developer. But I hear there was a time many years ago when Java was the hot new technology in town and naming your crappy new language, "Java"Script was considered a good marketing strategy.
You're not wrong so much as out of fashion.
It's very important to recognize how much industry trends are driven by fashion. But being fashionable also makes an ecosystem good. Well, at least makes it better. For certain definitions of better. Lots of development attention that means there's probably a highly visible project building exactly the bells and whistles that will garner praise and more attention for the ecosystem.
You can make your slow, measured, careful decisions about tech to use. But webdev is full of YOLO projects too. Churn and fashion are always going to be at your door.