Many good and well-designed languages are older than PHP (Scheme is from 1975!), so that cannot be the cause of PHP's poor design. Rasmus Lerdoff actually gave

Many good and well-designed languages are older than PHP (Scheme is from 1975!), so that cannot be the cause of PHP's poor design. Rasmus Lerdoff actually gave a great talk on why he created PHP and how it sort of accidentally turned into a programming language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmD1Q4FsXCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmD1Q4FsXCc