#UnpopularOpinion

PHP isn't inherently a bad language. Bad developers give PHP a bad name.

And bad devs who produce shitty php code and those who scrap code too xD

I guess php has been extensively used by many people as their first tech, as an introduction to Web Dev.
Everybody has to start somewhere, and everybody starts by doing stupid beginner mistakes. It so happened that a lot of those have been made in php, hence the poor reputation of the language.
Am I wrong?

This is kind of here say, but there was a conference close to where I live where a company invited the creator of PHP to speak to their developers. They expected some inspirational speech about how they could level up, but instead got an hour long rant about how no one is using PHP like he intended.

Isn't this true of most, if not all, languages?

The problem with php imo is how loose it is. To many ways to do things. This causes a lot of issues in maintaining code, because once you take over someone elses project, they have an entirely different coding style and you don't understand shit. Idk. It's gotten better lately since php5.4(?), but still has ways to go.

I guess because most start with PHP but they never follow through with the design patterns or try to understand the tools that the language offers like traits and interfaces for example. Of course you need to get to the point where you know when to use them. And when to keep things simple. but again most just stop and never follow through despite the potential.

@f00df00d yeah, I know it's improved and started doing so already with 5.4. The damage to the rep of the language is already done though. I think php has it's merits and I still use it to crank out code fast. Personally I would love statically typed php.