PHP is still usable, sure, but there's just not many compelling reasons to do so, except in certain cases where it does offer a clear-cut advantage (low-fricti

PHP is still usable, sure, but there's just not many compelling reasons to do so, except in certain cases where it does offer a clear-cut advantage (low-friction, newb-friendly development and deployment of simple dynamic sites, for example). I also find the "there's tons of spaghetti code in other languages" argument tiresome. That's true, but well-designed languages tend to help keep people off that path - or at least do a better job of doing so. PHP is not one of those languages, hence the need for a "PHP the Right Way". As asserted in the post, PHP is indeed used on a ton of websites. Most of these websites were written when PHP was the best tool for the job. But languages evolve. Other languages have learned the lessons of PHP and improved upon it. PHP has done a fine job of "modernizing" itself lately, but it's still stuck with a lower quality overall design than some of the alternatives, and those alternatives have kept moving forward at the same time too. It reminds me a lot of IE's "look, we've implemented that thing that the good browsers had 3 years ago" announcements. It's great that PHP is not standing still, and that continued improvement must be awesome for existing projects that are built on PHP. But for me, starting new projects in 2012, there's zero compelling case for using PHP, just as there are many old languages that would have been "the" choice once upon a time, but are now replaced by better things.