I use to joke about PHP in the early 2000s, but now that I see the "better languages", I am starting to like PHP.

If you want a web page that works with a database (aka. CRUD), presents it in HTML form, and with a bit of business logic, like 90% of websites, then PHP does it simply. None of these astronautic patterns like you see in Spring, the dependency hell that comes with node, or whatever the cool kids are using right now. There is a reason PHP became so successful despite the hate it gets.

PHP is not great for security, it was terrible when it started, but now it is decent. And sure, a vulnerability was found, it is now fixed, every time a vulnerability is found and fixed, PHP becomes better. New technology may have an advantage due to better design, safer languages, etc... but you shouldn't dismiss the qualities that 20 years of bugfixes get you.

As for x86, yep, it is legacy, but it is not completely stupid either. The "RISC core" is not right, it is not like x86 become ARM or RISC V code internally. It is translated into long microcode-style instructions that wouldn't make sense as an ISA, where a compact representation is important for memory/cache reasons. RISC code is also translated just like x86 code, and the advantage of CISC vs RISC has gone back and forth. Now it seems we are going back towards RISC again, but before that, it was CISC, and before that, RISC again. The quirk about x86 that complicates things seems to be the variable length instructions. But the real problem is not really about which ISA is the best (it is a very small part of modern CPUs), it is more about licensing and backwards compatibility.