@FourOh-LLC @atomicpoet Neither I said you hate it, I'm making a comparison like that simply because it makes no sense at all.
All languages have drawbacks, including PHP, I don't deny that.

When it comes to Python, apps written in it are not only zettaslow, they're always a dependency hell, and will break as soon as a dependency of a dependency of a dependency of a dependency of a library an application happens to be using gets updated, but the Python intepreter doesn't.
And if you update the Python intepreter, there'll be other dependencies complaining.
So the moment there's an update available, Python applications just collapse out of nowhere.
Not as much of a problem on a nanny distro like Ubuntu, but on many others it's a major problem.

As for syncing upgrade cycles with Debian, PHP gets upgraded only once a year, and that's just a minor version too.
Major versions get updated once every X number of years, and everything else are just bugfix releases.
Also, the Debian team is responsible for their packages being outdated, not the PHP team.
That's why distributions like Artix and operating systems like OpenBSD are already on 8.2, whereas with Debian you'll need to be lucky if they'd even upgrade to 8.1 when Bookworm becomes stable.

And if you want to use Debian, I'd at the very least recommend Devuan instead.
It's the same distro, but without the severe dependency on SoystemD.
Devuan 4 = Debian 11, Devuan 3 = Debian 10, Devuan 2 = Debian 9, Devuan 1 = Debian 8, and there's no equivelant to Debian 7 or older, simply because that was when Debian was actually good.