Hello there, just couple of words about PHP. I've been develop on PHP more than 10 years, I've seen it all 3,4,5,{6},7. Yes PHP was not good in terms of engineering and patterns, but it was simple, it was the most simple language for web to start those days. It was simple as you put code into file, upload it via FTP and it works. No java servlets, no unix consoles, no nothing, just shared hosting account was enough to host site, or even application with database. As database everybody used to have mysql, again because its simple to start and easy to maintain. So PHP+MySQL became industry standard on Web during 00-2012, and continues in some way.
You can write HTML and logic inside single file, within php code, even more single file may content few pages, or even kind of framework. That simplicity and agility sticks everybody who wants to develop sites with PHP.
This is pretty much about why it is so popular.

Each good or wannabe PHP developer in an early days write its own framework or library (like in javascript this days because of nodejs)

Imagine that PHP has hadn't have package manager, developers used to have host packages on their own sites, then various packages catalog sites created, and then finally composer. A gazillions of php code had spread over internet, without any kind of dependency control. To include libraries to your projects you have to just write include, or require. Some developers do it better than others.

So what we have ? A lots of code, no repositories, zip archives with libraries, no dependency control.
Project that uses that kind of code are still alive even today, they are solid hose of cards, and unmaintainable of course.

And main question that I'm trying to answer is Why PHP is not good ?
- First is amount of legacy code which people copy and pasted into their project, spread it even more like a virus.
- Lack of industry standards at the beginning lead to a lots of bad practices among developers. PHP code usually smells.
open source php projects in early days was developed in same conditions so even in phpbb, phpnuke, wordpress, drupal used to have a lot of bad practices in their codebase. So php developers usually not study by another library, instead they write their own frameworks/libraries.
- "It works", - there are no strong business demands, on web development, again because lack of standards, and concerns.
This three things are basically same, they linked to each other and summarize of answer of why PHP have strong smells and everybody yelling against it.

Whats is with PHP nowadays ? Of course PHP today is more influenced by good practice of webdev. Composer, Zend, Laravel, Yii, Symphony and language it self became more adult so to say, but developers...

People who never tried anything except PHP are usually weaker in programming and ecosystem knowledge than people who tried something else, python, perl, ruby, c for instance.

Summary

PHP as any other programming language is a tool. Each tool has its own task. Consider this and your task requirements and PHP can be just good enough solution.
"PHP is shit" - usually you heard that from people who never write strong applications on PHP and haven't used any good tools like Symphony or Laravel.
Cheap developers, - the bigger community, the more chance to hire cheap developers, and more chance to get bad code. That can be applied on any other language.
PHP has professionals developers, usually they have not only php on scope.

That's all folks, this is very brief, I am not covering php usage early days in details, but this is good enough to understand the point.

Enjoy.

First company I worked for, built around 40 websites with Drupal 7...in only a year (don't know if it's a lot for today's standards, but I was one guy doing everything). Of course I didn't have the time to keep updating everything and I continually insisted to the boss that we need more people if we are going to expand. Of course he kept telling me to keep working harder and that I "got this". Well, after a year a couple of websites got defaced, you know the usual stuff if you've been around for some time. Felt pretty bad at the time, it was a similar feeling to having your car stolen or something.

Anyways, fast forward about 2 years, started working on another company, and well...this one was on another level. They had a total of around 40 websites, with about 10 of them being Joomla 1.5 installations (Dear Lord have mercy on my soul(the security vulnerabilities from these websites only, were greater than Spiderman's responsibilities)) and the others where WordPress websites, all that ON A SINGLE VPS, I mean, come on... Websites being defaced on the daily, pharma-hacks everywhere, server exploding from malware queing about 90k of spam emails on the outbox, server downtime for maintenance happening almost weekly, hosting company mailing me on the daily about the next malware detection adventure etc. Other than that, the guy that I was replacing, was not giving a single fuck. He was like, "dude it's all good here, everything works just fine and all you have to do is keep the clients happy and shit". Sometimes, I hate myself for being too caring and responsible back then.

I'm still having nightmares of that place. Both that office and that VPS.

The client wants the booking project to be all in JS Framework (not specifying any) and NO PHP since client hates PHP (and I don't know why) from the very beginning when the only dev was my former front-end partner (lead dev).
I was wondering why the client still continued the project, YET the file extensions were still on PHP. I asked the lead dev what happened and answered he didn't know know how to start migrating to JS framework and just started NATIVE PHP.
Still, as being a good dev and a supporter to lead dev, did accept and the project as lead dev's assistant. Fixed bugs, enhancement and responsive (DEMMIT, I FREAKING HATE RESPONSIVE) and later complained why am I doing front-end tasks, when it's not my task, supposedly. I EXPECTED MORE ON BACK-END TASKS!

(HERE'S THE EPIC ADVISE GOES AND CALLED OURSELVES MASTER)

Me: Master, why did you not started the project in JS Framework instead of native php?
Lead Dev : You know what master, this project has been already done if the client allows US to use WordPress for this project will still be migrated to JS. And now, WE are trapped to make every window size be responsive since there are already a standard for each window screen.
Me: (DO NOT INCLUDE ME IN YOUR FUCKING SORCERY! I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DID THERE AND WHY D'YOU ACCEPT THIS PROJECT, SLAVE, WHEN YOU ALREADY KNOW YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO IT, IN THE FIRST PLACE. STOP BEING A DICKHEAD AND DO NOT WASTE CLIENT'S MONEY AND EFFORT FOR YOUR USELESS BUNCH OF SHIT!) Indeed, responsive is a such a pain in the arse.
Lead Dev: Maybe, let's just finish our tasks first and wait the project to be migrated to JS.

P.S. The project manager and client asked me if I do know how to migrate the project from native PHP to JS framework and sabotaged lead dev. OFCOURSE, YES! But, I did not respond that quickly, unless eerm, you know, I earn greater than lead dev. Truth be told and practically speaking, it's really unfair for me if I accept the back-job when the lead dev delivers inaccurate deliverables and earned greater than me. No way, Jose!

Now, I am not working with him because I'm super done with him and later did I know, lead dev is looking for Drupal dev to be working for the booking project.

Yesterday I spent my whole fucking day solving a bug from a Drupal multistep form, the kind of bugs you know it worked for a year then suddenly start to go full retard and simply not working at all

Took me half a day to get how it worked, half the rest to get why it stopped working and how to to make it work again, knowing that the "old fashion way" can't be applied anymore for dumb reasons (unless the client wants his user and payment history tables to be dropped, which I doubt)

I don't know if my solution is the best, but it works without too much tweaks, and hey, it still works today!!

Let me create the Drupal train.

Fuck Drupal, its verbose shit, how it's supposed to inherit from Symfony, how it's not (at all), how it needs to create a WHOLE FUCKING TABLE FOR EVERY SINGLE TEXT INPUT, how it's required to write TWO LONG ASS PHP lines of code to display ONE FUCKING IMAGE.

Fuck these millions of hooks that allows you to do "incredible stuff" that you could normally do without Drupal.

Fuck how templates are generated, you wouldn't believe how bad it is, and how web integrators are loosing their mind to try to correctly display datas that are contained

Finally, the people who wants some "modern stuff" and make the tests even harder to write and the site uglier.

I just can't believe that recruiters still want to hire people for some Drupal shit.

As far as static content creators go: I think Gatabyt JS is pretty fucking cool.

Docs make sense and shit is easy to navigate too.
React gets only as complicated as you want it too (that is across the board tho)
Integration with different data sources. You don't want to use wordpress but your retarded ass users don't get much sense into other things? sure fuck it, fine whatever. Wanna use drupal? here

I am still looking into it but other than the 230mb of node modules for a hello world type of project I really don't see that many issues.

Drupal is such a fucking wortless and infuriating hinder in software development.
I've been a software developer for the past 6 years, I have worked with many different frameworks and technologies in both backend and frontend, such as .net, react, php, you get the idea.
In my current project, we have been forced to use Drupal as backend. Initially I had no complaints, but after trying to use it for the past month, I'm beyond mad at the ridiculous and overly complicated way of doing the most basic tasks in existence.
Not only is installing Drupal such a dependency hell, that we had to modify our entire ecosystem just to accommodate for Drupal's versioning, but it's just a crutch that we have to carry around and make ridiculous exceptions for.
I've seen other projects made in Drupal by professional companies, and not a single one of them actually makes use of the CMS that is meant to be the entire point of this piece of shit.
Instead, we have to make a regular backend database, force the PHP code into Drupal's modules and then try for the impossible of making use of the pointless structure system integrated in Drupal.
It's almost pointless since we still had to make a react application to actually do the pages, since Drupal is limited as hell when it comes to personalization.
Just to end up with this error message: "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later." no explanation, no nothing, just going after an endless debugging using [drush] commands.

Anyway, I fucking hate Drupal