I really like Django as an opinionated framework. I have also used Flask, Falcon, and FastAPI, all with good results in their own niche. I also like Play and Scala and Spring Boot with Java.
> For folks not wishing to switch frameworks and tooling every year, you can get a lot done with PHP.
You can also get a lot done with wood and nails, but that doesn't mean it's the best tool for all kind of jobs.
Comparing PHP to using wood and nails feels misguided. PHP is a web framework, which makes it easy to handle writing web applications. It's more like using Python for web stuff is wood and nails, while using PHP is using wood and a nailgun when you need to stitch planks together (or something like that). PHP is made for the web, and you can tell by the specialization of the API interface it offers, which ships with most things you need for doing web stuff, while most languages does not. Getting the body from a POST request is trivial in PHP, while in most language you'll use a library for that, or write a bunch of code.
The nail-gun is a surprisingly good analogy. There are lots of other things you can do with a hammer, from hammering nails, to shaping metals, to removing nails, to getting things unstuck. With a nail-gun you are kind of limited on what you can do.
I really like Django as an opinionated framework. I have also used Flask, Falcon, and FastAPI, all with good results in their own niche. I also like Play and Scala and Spring Boot with Java.
> For folks not wishing to switch frameworks and tooling every year, you can get a lot done with PHP.
You can also get a lot done with wood and nails, but that doesn't mean it's the best tool for all kind of jobs.