TBH I find it completely wild that someone prefers PHP to a statically generated site (Assuming you can get away with statically-generated). Just serving static files is way way way faster than running a backend, not to mention all of the process efficiencies you get by not having to manage servers etc.
When I update my blog (statically-generated), I add an .md file containing the blog post, commit it to git, and push it to a git repo. A quick CI/CD build fires off which generates the HTML (~1 bash command in a docker container) and pushes the static files to a file server. Easy!
I guess it depends on how a person started off with web dev. I have always made personal web pages directly inside an .html or .php site. Instead of "##", I used <h2></h2> and so on. I don't code for a living so my practices will seem pretty archaic because there's no git, no Webpack or script minification/Gzip involved.
I remember starting an Android course ~9 years ago and then giving up within the first hour because I could not configure the Eclipse environment properly. I think the same would have been true of web dev if I had to set up a Docker container just to get to "Hello World".
HTML has that "just works" quality that kept me interested in learning.
If you want to work with html files, you can always add a CDN link to something like Marked: https://marked.js.org/ You can enter the text of your post in markdown but it will be rendered as html.
Running PHP doesn't necessarily mean "managing servers", that's what hosting providers are for. And static sites have their own limitations, so it's not that surprising that people prefer the flexibility.
When I update my blog (statically-generated), I add an .md file containing the blog post, commit it to git, and push it to a git repo. A quick CI/CD build fires off which generates the HTML (~1 bash command in a docker container) and pushes the static files to a file server. Easy!