What would you consider an exact replacement? And by exact I mean upload a file and off you go? Ease of installing it on shared web hosts is only really important when empowering wider audience to self-host is a concern, but when it is, is there even just one thing that competes? I'm not saying this to be argumentative, I just ended up using PHP for a bunch of things because it works fine (and minor utilities I wrote like 10 years ago still run perfectly well, minor adjustments required as PHP was upgraded). But my ego isn't in this, I'm a crap coder in any language I use, but being able to run my site on localhost EZ PZ and just upload changed files and the database every now and then is just gold. I'd love to rewrite it to be
even faster, and it's not that I find PHP very pretty. But the current iteration just runs so perfectly smoothly I keep putting off the ritual rewriting.
The only other thing I like other than PHP is something that's even dumber, and that's rewriting it in C++. That's the language I love, using it like C with classes instead of structs, and overloaded operators. That's all I ever wanted in life, really. Anything else? Let it mature 10 years, and not be pushed by one of these companies so super keen on being middlemen. Until then I'd rather derp around than buy into any of it.
I know I'm full of it, but here's how I write super secure code: I simply start with nothing, and add things slowly and deliberately. The program doesn't do anything I don't whitelist it to do. Orwell said if people can't write properly, they can't think properly... well, if you need a linter to learn to put a semicolon every single time, or a safe language [sic] to realize you're dealing with user input, can you code properly? I say this as the worst coder in the world, but I still wonder. Orwell probably had people who proofread for him which is where it all falls down, and I honestly don't consider myself a good programmer. I'm not above compiler warnings. But I don't believe in that to the extreme, I don't believe in looking at the GPS instead of the road.
Granted, that's all for things I intend to use for myself, with me being the only user, and I'm also fond of having a local authoritative copy and just syncing the changes one way, other than simple stats that get generated on the server. That way, not having critical data that could be stolen, I only have to worry about maybe rogue files getting dropped on the server. Didn't happen yet, I'm sure if I was paranoid I'd find a way to automate that. Bam, done. Not useful for a lot, but if everybody did that instead of flocking to yet another silo, just make up their own crummy stuff but be as careful as they can while they do it, there'd be a lot less tears over data breaches. Security through individuality.
Okay, I guess I am being argumentative, sorry. But it's not because I feel left behind, it's because I'm bored. Not at the moment, but with web dev trends, and Google. I just have to roll my eyes so much when I see screens of requirements to tinker with the same 3 tutorial type projects. If you need more than PHP to make something like, say, HN or blogspot.com, what are you even doing? And then look at the HTML source of just about any Google page. I don't care what they use to spit that out, I'm sure it's a million best practices used perfectly, but the result turns me off so badly. If that's super useful and fun, good for the people enjoying it, then they won't miss me doing it, too.