I see javascript based backends being preferred over PHP in the last few years. What went wrong with PHP?
* Insert obligatory "PHP was always wrong" joke here. *
No, PHP is still very much popular (the most used CMSs, all written in PHP, are just the tip of the iceberg). It's just that NodeJS and the myriad of frontend frameworks are still somewhat of the new kids in town, making JS talk "cool" and, since programming communities are notorious echo chambers (and JS particularly so), it can give the impression that other stuff isn't prominent.
In a different example: Python is my favorite language to work with and is also extremely popular, being almost the de-facto choice in a couple of fields, yet one wouldn't know it by looking at some communities, despite getting buzz in general.
I recently switched from PHP to Nodejs. The only reason is PHP doesn't support web sockets. Also Javascript is much better in handling asynchronous tasks.
Matti
UI Designer & Webdeveloper
Nothing went wrong. It's still a really good choice to build whatever you want. You're pretty familiar with JavaScript? Take Node.js. You're good at PHP? Take Laravel, Symfony, whatever.. You're a Ruby fanatic? Take Rails or Sinatra.
You just need to be good at your language/framework/tool of choice. No user of your website / webapp / app cares about the language behind it. nobody.