To put it bluntly, if I “had to do it with PHP”, I would quit.
Personally, I find it easier to grok React than Ember, but there is tons of cross pollination going on between frameworks (glimmer is inspired by React) and when perf is super critical stuff gets very tricky in both frameworks.
That said, I am not sure this discussion really belongs here.
Going to close it cause I can see only lots of arguments which have little to do with Discourse as the outcome of this.