Once you need a framework and the complexity that goes with it, PHP starts to suck. It lacks the behavior and tools to nicely manage complexity beyond a pile of files.
But when what you need is a pile of files, PHP is awesome.
With PHP you can grow your own infrastructure from being a couple of calls to your RDBMS/MySQL up to installing modern libs and implementing a framework.
On the other hand: With RoR, Python, NodeJS, et al (which by itself can do anything, since they need frameworks and libraries for anything web-related) you have to start with these HUGE dependencies and package managers that only add more technical debt to your project plus your projects can't start from dead-simple bd-calls it has to be all or nothing and under the same structure because "it's the right thing to do bro, you will thank me later"... guess what: i still don't use everything.
The day a languages appears that is web-ready and dead-simple with no technical debt that's the day we can say: PHP Suck.
Once you need a framework and the complexity that goes with it, PHP starts to suck. It lacks the behavior and tools to nicely manage complexity beyond a pile of files.
But when what you need is a pile of files, PHP is awesome.