I started my career in 2006 with PHP and was using it a few years before in private. I used it until 2012.
After that I switched to JavaScript and never went back. First, I did frontend development, then backend with Node.js, then Mobile with React-Native. In between games and now serverless.
PHP isn't bad, it became quite nice these days. But it simply isn't as flexible as JavaScript.
Everything new technology that comes out has JavaScript support right from the bat.
If I need static typing, I drop in TypeScript.
The performance is also crazy good for a "mere scripting language". If you need more perfomance than JS has to offer, there is only C, C++, and Rust left.
Back in the days I used PHP for those exact reasons. It was simple, fast enough, and supported everywhere. Sadly, that isn't the case anymore.
I guess it depends how you define "flexible". The language itself is clunkier, particularly anything involving closures (although that's getting better), but it does so, so much stuff out of the box (even if the APIs are often a bit footgun-y).
That means that you've missed the train of modern PHP and frameworks completely. It's not fair to compare old school PHP with modern lang like TypeScript
After that I switched to JavaScript and never went back. First, I did frontend development, then backend with Node.js, then Mobile with React-Native. In between games and now serverless.
PHP isn't bad, it became quite nice these days. But it simply isn't as flexible as JavaScript.
Everything new technology that comes out has JavaScript support right from the bat.
If I need static typing, I drop in TypeScript.
The performance is also crazy good for a "mere scripting language". If you need more perfomance than JS has to offer, there is only C, C++, and Rust left.
Back in the days I used PHP for those exact reasons. It was simple, fast enough, and supported everywhere. Sadly, that isn't the case anymore.