And since then tools such as Composer and Symfyony3 have been released. It's been almost 10 years. Hell, even Magento2 isn't that bad, if you can look past the awkward dependency injection they're in the process of fixing.

PHP in 2008 is very different to PHP in 2016. PHP frameworks in 2008 are very different to PHP in 2016. PHP developers in 2008 are very different to PHP in 2016.