I agree with almost everything in this post. While PHP has it’s warts, it’s a highly productive language thanks to it’s short development cycle (no need to restart the server, zero boilerplate) and simple semantics (no server-global state, only request-global).

Several of the sites I run are coded in PHP, and while it could be prettier, it works just fine. My main gripe with PHP is the naming inconsistencies, but the amazing documentaion makes up for it.

The Hacker News comment thread is filled with insight on the subject as well.