"so is it good for fast scripting but poor for real programming" Yes to the first part, and a warning to the last part: What constitutes "real programming" is

"so is it good for fast scripting but poor for real programming" Yes to the first part, and a warning to the last part: What constitutes "real programming" is a question of definition, and here be dragons, as such discussions almost always devolve into "my [favourite] is better than [your favourite]". There seems to be ample amounts of hatred for PHP here, leading me to believe that either a) people here have never met a GOOD php developer, or b) a minority of users here enjoy the "my favourite scripting language is more obscure than yours" circle-jerk