PHP was my main language when I did we development. But that was years ago. I took a break, and when I came back I had to learn about PHP classes.

It was a great language for a self taught person coming from the C family, but there are likely better options now.

I would again. The mistake was continuing with it for too long.

15 years ago when I got into PHP, Python wasn’t as mature as it is now for web development. There was Django but Ruby on Rails was similar and more popular. At the time, PHP had a vibrant open source community and lots of options. It was the right choice for the moment but things have moved on. PHP got stuck trying to make PHP 6 and spun it’s wheels while Python went from strength to strength.

The time to bail on PHP was probably around or before 2015. The writing was on the wall by then. But it wasn’t until 2019 that I got into Python.

These days all my PHP work is maintenance and migration, all new work is Python-based.

All else being equal I prefer languages with a proper type system from the start instead of type annotations as a band-aid. So, probably not, if I can help it.