I don’t know if it’s due to over-exposure to programming memes but I certainly believed that no one was starting new PHP projects in 2023 (or 2020, or 2018, or 2012…). I was under the impression we only still discussed it at all because WordPress is still around.
Would a PHP evangelist like to disabuse me of my notions and make an argument for using PHP for projects such as Kbin in this day and age?
Let’s try not to insult other people’s preferences.
In a way though he’s right, picking a language because it is “cool” is the wrong reason to pick a language. You should be looking at other things like performance, scalability, security, functionality and see if those facets align with the requirements for your project.