JS is actually 21 now. According to wiki, it was developed under codename "Mocha" and shipped with Netscape Navigator 2.0. [1] "May 23, 1995" Personally, I'm pretty sure the version of "JS" when it was first released and more modern JS share very little other than logic and symbology, I think that can be said for many programming languages.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript

I have a feeling that by "old" the topic creator actually meant less relevant than it once was. Both languages are still very relevant and therefore out of the running. PHP may be waning but it still powers a huge chunk of the internet, just think about all those wordpress blogs.

some of the biggest advancements in PHP recently have come from folks who were not born when PHP was initially created...