I would just like to point out a few issues:
A) I deliberately focused on the language itself in my claims.
The functions I cited earlier were meant to illustrate the side effects of a certain mindset of the core language.
Keep in mind: these functions are not from some random library in the ecosystem, but from the core library of the language, providing core functionality. And that hasn't changed, nor the functions.
B) You've made a number of statements in response to my comments, but I don't see any supporting references.
The only justification you've given is your own opinion that "the article is too old and not relevant anymore".
Which takes us to point C.
C) I skimmed through the article again, along with the general documentation of the language, and I stand by this statement:
"Every major point in that article about the language is as relevant today as it was in 2012."
PHP might work fine for templating some web pages, but so does Jinja. As a general programming language, it falls short in too many ways to list here. You can revisit the original article I mentioned before for a more comprehensive list, in particular the "core language" section.
Well, at least that's my opinion. As I said, you're free to disagree - and that's OK.
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Side note: The easiest approach during a disagreement in an online discussion is to write a lot of "opinion-based statements" as if they were facts, and leave everything else as an exercise for the reader.
If you want to be taken seriously, please don't do that.