I would attribute this discrepancy to a natural extension of pg's thoughts about the blub paradox (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/

I would attribute this discrepancy to a natural extension of pg's thoughts about the blub paradox (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html). Most PHP developers I've talked to justify their work in PHP by saying that essentially languages are more or less the same, and that PHP is "just as good" as any other language. It's rare for me to hear someone say that PHP is substantially better than other languages. By contrast, former PHP developers who now work in other languages usually say that PHP is significantly worse than other languages. It seems natural that someone who thinks there's a significant difference would be more likely to comment about it than someone who thinks the languages are basically the same. There's more to say about the difference than there is about a lack of difference, and it's relatively hard to provide real arguments for the lack of a difference – it's usually more "there's no real evidence of a difference and this works fine for me."