I've never quite understood the common reasons for bashing PHP. When I first got into web development, it was effectively the only real choice available. What i

I've never quite understood the common reasons for bashing PHP. When I first got into web development, it was effectively the only real choice available. What it offered the beginner over the likes of Java and ASP (at that time) was ease of setup, a coherent model for simple data driven web page development (especially when compared to the likes of JSP), a great suite of built in functions, and comparatively excellent documentation. If I had to teach someone how to code now, I'd probably still consider PHP for the reasons above. Though Python has probably eclipsed PHP for many novice friendly reasons (docs and built ins).