You claim "misinformation, false claims and unsupported statements" while you yourself only appeal to popularity and habit. Those are not directly correlated to quality. It simply means that PHP in the eyes of the businessmen is the safer choice due to a much bigger hiring pool. The popularity and adoption have a snowballing effect; once a certain critical mass is achieved then the whole thing sustains itself.
Every reasonable programmer will agree with you that different languages serve different niches. Nowadays however there are several mature and solid web frameworks in other languages, thus PHP is very far from the only -- or the best -- contender in this area.
And yes, you are biased. That's quite okay. I can also make a ton of smaller projects in 2-3 days with Elixir's Phoenix -- some that have a smaller scope I can also do with Rust's Rocket even. But I don't claim they are the "no-brainer" choice. You should not too.
Finally, implying that choosing anything other than PHP makes the project a "for fun" endeavour is disrespectful and does not do your argument any favours.
Every reasonable programmer will agree with you that different languages serve different niches. Nowadays however there are several mature and solid web frameworks in other languages, thus PHP is very far from the only -- or the best -- contender in this area.
And yes, you are biased. That's quite okay. I can also make a ton of smaller projects in 2-3 days with Elixir's Phoenix -- some that have a smaller scope I can also do with Rust's Rocket even. But I don't claim they are the "no-brainer" choice. You should not too.
Finally, implying that choosing anything other than PHP makes the project a "for fun" endeavour is disrespectful and does not do your argument any favours.