People like to hate on PHP, but PHP provides you with all the tools you need to write a fully working backend, where as JS provides you with half-assed solutions for writing frontend, which is why we have 1000 frameworks and we still can't agree on how to write frontend code. Seriously, we don't even have a convention for writing a simple reusable component with vanilla JS, everyone makes up their own thing. Web components were supposed to be that, but they're a good example of what I meant by "half-assed", because they're ugly, verbose, clunky, don't really solve the right problems, and nobody likes writing them.

I don't think PHP is any better in solving the backend, than JS is in solving frontend. On the Frontend the situation is not ideal, but we made big leaps every let's say 5 years, going from jQuery to React and from React to later generation frameworks like svelte / solid etc. Yes, the landscape is fragmented and there are maybe too many options, but you make it sound like PHP is universally used as the backend solution, while I see it being used little these days except for legacy systems from 15-20 years ago.

That is why I made my peace with Next.js.

It is the only framework that feels like I am using JSP, JSF, ASP.NET, Spring, Quarkus, PHP.

Don't plan to use anything else in JS space, unless by external decisions not under my control.