I avoided php and its ecosystem like a plague for the longest time. However the who eco-system has evolved including the language e.g. functional paradigm (closures) and syntactic improvement (arrow functions). When you combine this with a modern web framework like php Laravel it is an absolute pleasure to work with, specifically as a monolithic for rapid application development, which is great for MVPs and ensuring you have product market fit. I am not sure how this translates over time to a micros-services. However if you're starting to writing a new application I would definitely recommend php + laravel for rapid application development. I say this relative to my extensive experience with nodejs express/java spring boot.