If all someone knew was PHP, maybe they would struggle to learn something else, but in my case, if I immerse myself in something and learn it and use it, it's not going to take me years to get productive with it. Especially given the limited things that PHP can do, learning to do those in python/ruby/C#/Go took... trivial amounts of time. With the benefit of more functionality and a sane API. (and in two cases, static typing)
Alternatively, if all I knew was PHP, I would understand why someone would be scared of learning something new. I mean, look up and down this thread. Everyone thinks a one-liner hello world is the pinnacle of the ultimate web dev language. Because real web frameworks require an http handler, they assume it's more work or harder. To me, it seems that many in the "PHP is easier!" crowd are too scared or lazy to take the time to learn something else and realize that better separation of concerns and tooling actually allows for faster and safer development.
Alternatively, if all I knew was PHP, I would understand why someone would be scared of learning something new. I mean, look up and down this thread. Everyone thinks a one-liner hello world is the pinnacle of the ultimate web dev language. Because real web frameworks require an http handler, they assume it's more work or harder. To me, it seems that many in the "PHP is easier!" crowd are too scared or lazy to take the time to learn something else and realize that better separation of concerns and tooling actually allows for faster and safer development.