My theory is simple: Have you ever heard the pithy saying that there is no worse non-smoker than an ex-smoker? I think many of the loudest anti-PHP voices are

My theory is simple: Have you ever heard the pithy saying that there is no worse non-smoker than an ex-smoker? I think many of the loudest anti-PHP voices are ex-PHP developers. They/We naturally assume our own experience is normative, and since we didn't know X, Y, or Z back when we were coding in PHP, obviously neither does anybody else still coding in PHP. Or, more graciously, back then PHP was the best language we had learned up to that point (better than BASIC or Perl, say), but now we use Ruby or Python or something else, so now we recognize the deficiencies in PHP. Clearly those other people, just a few steps behind us on the path, need to also learn about the deficiencies in PHP and how much better X is. There are any number of nuanced ways for that to be expressed, but ultimately I think it's mostly tribalism, and obviously unhelpful. Sure, I used to write PHP. Built my first startup with it, sold it, and stuck with it for a few years more even after that. And sure, I don't write in PHP any more. These days it's Python or Java or Clojure for me. Because PHP sucks? No, because it doesn't suit what I'm doing these days as well. And not necessarily for reasons related to the quality of the language.