PHP code as a whole seems to lend itself to tighter coupling, as you say with some framework stuff to get the advantage of some things you need to adopt the lot

PHP code as a whole seems to lend itself to tighter coupling, as you say with some framework stuff to get the advantage of some things you need to adopt the lot. It is probably rooted in the pre-PHP5 culture where there was a lack of language constructs to make things as reusable as you would like.