Ask HN: Is PHP/MySQL Still Practical for Building Web Applications? 16 years ago
not to be judgemental but it seems like you are new to programming and have a bias towards the new languages because its mainly all you have used.
PHP is based mainly off C-syntax and although the $ sign for variables is something new (and not an issue to me), the "dot" symbol is extremely familiar for those that have programmed in C/C++. It makes sense that a string would use "dot" (think of ...) for concatenation and an integer or numeric value would use "plus"+.
Your points are valid but I think the syntax behind PHP is great, maybe it could be better at OOP when calling to functions (as one person mentioned) but I am very happy with it.