Onramp is gentle... to a point. While I'm a fan of PHP for what it is, there are still plenty of footguns. Probably more than modern statically typed languages.
> Probably more than modern statically typed languages.
True, but most people considering PHP probably aren't considering statically typed languages. They're probably comparing it to JavaScript, Ruby, and Python. PHP holds it's own surprisingly well in that comparison. It certainly has it's fair share of quirks, but so do the others.
I haven't used Spring, but I had high hopes for ASP.Net (C# is a very well designed language) and found that not only was the ecosystem around it decidedly lacking, and even the core libraries like EntityFramework were much less flexible and well designed than I am used to in the PHP/JavaScript ecosystems. And they didn't seem be that actively maintained either.
PHP usually has a good library for most things. JavaScript usually has 3-5 good choices (but nothing rails-like). .NET often seemed to have nothing, or only proprietary options.
