Looks like KBin has an edge over Lemmy now in terms of monthly active users.
It's obviously a pretty silly thing, and is not in any way indicative of which project is "better" or more "long-term viable" or anything — instances of both federate with one another, and with the rest of fedi, so it's all one happy family.
That said, it's notable. KBin is a relative newcomer to the "Reddit-like fedi instance" game, and also does not have the tankie baggage.
Anyway, the more, the merrier!
KBin: https://the-federation.info/platform/184
Lemmy: https://the-federation.info/platform/73
Discussion on fedi: https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/110527049024028986
Modern PHP is supposed to be a decent language these days rather than a collection of footguns so I wouldn’t write it off out of hand. It wouldn’t be my first choice of language but it still runs huge swathes of the web. What it will mean is it’ll be harder for Kbin to attract developers on a voluntary basis I think, if I’m giving my time for free I’d much rather spent it writing Rust than PHP even if PHP is decent these days.