Idk, PHP chugs on splendidly with arrays that combine both arrays and maps. I regret to say that PHP is considerably faster than some better languages like Python and Ruby, and arrays are the workhorse structure there.
(Like, PHP's approach to FastCGI is that the script's runtime is destroyed after every request and then started anew for the next one, and it still outperforms Python's always-on approach. Of mainstream languages, only Node can compete.)