I agree with you wholeheartedly. Passionate people love to communicate with other passionate people, PHP as, you said, has a lower barrier to entry- it's like t

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Passionate people love to communicate with other passionate people, PHP as, you said, has a lower barrier to entry- it's like the Java of web languages. There's too many people and companies that just churn out php and java code as a job. It's not an ethos to them. Just because you use PHP doesn't make you passionless, but because it's gone "mainstream", it becomes a filter of some sorts- just like the Shun is getting too popular right now. It's not about the specific tool you use- instead it's about the passion and ideas that the tool conveys. In the end, the tools are meaningless. It's the ideas and messages around the end product that people remember.