You know what else changed around this time?

They dropped Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on rails got a bad rap IMO.

It was maybe the epitome of the get shit done internet era, and despite AI's proported productivity gains, I actually don't think we've got anywhere close to the velocity, stability, and simplicity of the peak Rails era just coming out of those PHP days. And teams were actually way smaller than they are now even after all these AI cuts!