The standard library of PHP is still the same old crappy standard library that it used to have with only some minor fixes. The language itself is not that bad (still worse than Python, JS or Ruby) but the standard library is awful. One thing I have to give modern PHP is that Composer is pretty neat, better than NPM and the packaging mess of Python and roughly on par with Rubygems/Bundler.

The PHP standard library has issues for sure (shout-out to real_escape_string), but so do Python and JS (I can't speak for Ruby as I've never used it). JS's "hide everything behind a few magical objects" (Math, window, document, etc.) approach isn't much better in my opinion. Python is a bit better, but mostly because Python 3 was a clean break from Python 2.

I find the biggest argument for or against PHP in the context of these languages to be "I find dollar signs aestethically (dis)pleasing". It's a perfectly valid preference to have, but people talk about PHP like they're still porting Wordpress plugins to PHP 4.

I do not care at all about the dollar sign, but I have worked both in PHP 4 and in modern PHP and I do not think the language has improved much. Other than Composer the dev experince was basically the same. It is still not up to par with Ruby or Python.