I disagree. PHP had a wonderful DX. Deploying a website literally meant connecting to the server over FTP, and drag-n-dropping your PHP files. Same for updates. Oh, and back then, IIRC even Windows Explorer supported FTP. It was literally just "write the URL, drop the files". How do you deploy a Node webapp? A python webapp? How do you make sure it stays up? Do you expose is directly or behind a nginx?

PHP won exactly because it had a wonderful DX.