> It makes me wonder if auto-refactoring spaghetti is a crackable problem I'm not sure it should be. It would probably still be a mess, just hidden and split o

> It makes me wonder if auto-refactoring spaghetti is a crackable problem I'm not sure it should be. It would probably still be a mess, just hidden and split over multiple source files. It's not PHP's fault, mind you. PHP pays the price for its own success here, meaning that lots of inexperienced hacks think they can code a web application, leaving behind these steaming piles of suck. It's also important to note that PHP is just a language, not a framework - as such it leaves unskilled "developers" a lot of rope to hang themselves with. You could in theory code the same nightmare you're describing with, say, Ruby on Rails. But in practice that doesn't happen because Ruby has a different clientele and Rails gives people a somewhat reasonable structure they can cling to. I do a lot of my development with PHP, it's a quite capable language. My biggest gripe with it is actually its syntax and uneven naming schemes for internal libraries. But the runtime itself is quite good and it is possible to do some very elegant things with it.