Kudos for saying that even as a massive PHP hater :)

IMO there is a reason why Wordpress is so popular (Disclaimer: massive Wordpress hater here!). Because of ease of install, more people can upload some folder in an (Web)FTP client than spinning up a Docker Container somewhere to host the latest JS Framework of the day just to host their little page or to show their content.

There is simply no need for bundlers, preprocessors and often not even [a lot of] package management (I'm aware of PHP composer though)

And exactly that ease of install is what could IMO make the Fediverse more democratic than having to run a container at some VPS that only a comparetively few people are able to do.

I went from PHP lover to PHP hater about a decade ago. I have to admit, reading some of the Kbin code has made me hate it a little less. It's nice not to see include() and require() everywhere. It's also nice to see some type safety features as that was the biggest reason I moved on. For anything much bigger than a simple script, even if you think you won't, you're going to struggle without it.

It's still not my first preference (and, let's face it, most of this is preference) but it looks a lot better.