It's worth pointing out back end JavaScript didn't really start to take off until the 0.x versions of NodeJS came out

> If there's room for Javascript, there's room for PHP.

PHP doesn't run in the browser. For browser programming there's literally almost no choice. TypeScript seems to be an improvement but even that compiles down to JS. Same for ReasonML and BuckleScript and Elm.

Unlike php, I can see Javascript slowly disappearing thanks to Wasm.

Ha, I was going to make a comment along these lines. I didn't mention the languages I enjoy over PHP but I can assure you JavaScript ain't one of them. I don't hate JS but as a server-side language I would pick PHP over it any day.