PHP is great for getting started, but I think it gives you a fundamentally flawed idea of how the web works. You tend to think in files, and not worry about what Apache or Nginx are actually doing.
Then when you switch to node, or basically any other language, you wonder where your file based logic is, and everything feels annoying and painful.
Do you really need to host your own server to run a single file? Yes, you do with PHP too, but it’s hidden in Apache and php-fpm.
The funny thing, even with React and Next, it’s ultimately just files served via a Webserver and I believe it’s the least flawed version you can get without building your own implementation of a TCP server which support HTTP (good luck with that btw ;-)).
Nowadays the basics are just abstracted away and talking with developers today who might even have never seen the basic version of an on old-school Webserver or a simple HTTP request executed manually via telnet runs sometimes into really weird error and root causes analysis.
So sometimes I wish the younger developers would know a bit more from the old world while the older developers now a bit more of the new world of web technologies (apache and a cgi driven bash script are not always the best solution even if you can squeeze ultimately everything into making even that work depending on your time and sadistic level :-)).
Most of the modern solutions out there have been developed to solve very specific problems for a certain group of people (see the difference between React and Angular in that regard) and not always the solution everyone seems to use is the best for your problem, team and business.
Then when you switch to node, or basically any other language, you wonder where your file based logic is, and everything feels annoying and painful.
Do you really need to host your own server to run a single file? Yes, you do with PHP too, but it’s hidden in Apache and php-fpm.