People have continued using Fortran and cobol for decades. Doesn't mean they are good or pleasant.

Try refactoring 20 year old php then tell me it is pleasant. If you can't, it shouldn't be recommended to OP

Fortran will outlive every single JS framework mentioned on this page, and then some. There's definitely good and pleasant in knowing that your code will run for many years to come, if your project has such a timespan. Therefore, PHP is absolutely a valid recommendation.

Fortran surviving so long is due to lock in, not merits. That is a bad thing, not a good one.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Basically my response :).

Not sure why you think 20 year old PHP code would be difficult to refactor. It's extremely backwards compatible and things don't change much at all.

I have a couple large projects written in PHP from 10-20 years ago that I'm sure I could refactor or make changes to easily.

https://github.com/photo/frontend

https://github.com/jmathai/photos

Also, see this: https://github.com/rectorphp/rector

Instant Upgrades and Automated Refactoring of any PHP 5.3+ code