PHP should REALLY focus on getting the core stuff in shape. Its still so annoying that you have to use mb_real_uppercase($name) for unicode. The other gripe is that the stdlib is SO messy. With PHP 5.3 they had a once in a lifetime opportunity to cleanup the stdlib and introduce a new namespaced API for builtins, and optionally introduce a uniform function call syntax: "foo"->strtoupper(); Whenever doing PHP the time…
You don't see it because you're not looking. There are many Laravel jobs in my area. If you think that is only for Legacy projects, might be mistaken.