I've been in the tech industry a long time and while younger me would have preferred a more techy platform like Matrix older me definitely prefers the ease of use of Discord. I feel like how to best make these kinds of platforms is solved well enough now that I don't want to bother with something more difficult to use unless I feel a strong motivation to do so.
I haven't looked lately but Matrix didn't do voice + text chat coherently last time I did either which made it a non-starter.
This game is forever alpha because they keep redoing the basic systems over and over again.
That said, there are new things to check out like new POIs and a water gathering system which seem nice.
The experimental build of Alpha 21 is due to be released on Monday and so the traditional streamer weekend is in full gear where you can preview it in advance.
Small tip as well: come Monday's launch you can install it yourself by opening your Steam library, right click the game -\> betas tab and selecting it from there.
PHP is fine. Lets not forget it's been used by the likes of Facebook, Wikipedia etc. which are much bigger websites then Kbin.
