2001 was 15 years ago. PHP looks completely different now. It looks very much like Java with -> instead of dots and a few differences.
Nobody sanes mixes HTML and PHP code anymore these days. Most people are using Twig for templating or at least something similar. Everything (decent) is object oriented these days.
So your views were correct 15 years ago, but have a look with fresh eyes and you will see something completely different.
Not disagreeing with you, the "javafication" of PHP has been going on for a while now (for better or for worse), but pluck your average person using PHP out from a crowd and they are still writing code like it's 2001.
If you pick an average person, then yes maybe. But that's because it's so widely used by non-developers.
But if you narrow that down to actual developers who have a job working on a product, not someone hacking a wordpress template, then it will look much different.
Not saying the average PHP developer is great at OOP, but at least things are moving into that direction. And the code quality has come very far since 2001, just look at at current open source libraries (see packagist.org) and compare them to old PHP code.
Nobody sanes mixes HTML and PHP code anymore these days. Most people are using Twig for templating or at least something similar. Everything (decent) is object oriented these days.
So your views were correct 15 years ago, but have a look with fresh eyes and you will see something completely different.