The trend I've noticed n recent years is that the PHP developer has to defend himself when talking about language choice, much like someone who decides to use .

The trend I've noticed n recent years is that the PHP developer has to defend himself when talking about language choice, much like someone who decides to use .NET. People never see the same need when starting a project in rails, even if it isn't that great a fit. One advantage PHP has for me is that nothing is abstracted away in a way that I don't understand the underlying components because I'm writing my own framework. Sure certain aspects I'll grab some cade as necessary but in general everything I'm doing I've either written it or parts of it myself. I get all the semantic language arguments against PHP and largely agree, this has become less of a problem for me though with experience.