I think this is very much a cultural problem within the PHP community. phpBB in particular is notorious for its unsustainable code and I think I figured out the

I think this is very much a cultural problem within the PHP community. phpBB in particular is notorious for its unsustainable code and I think I figured out the reasons. There are better ways of doing things (despite PHP's inherent warts) that some other projects have used quite successfully, and more importantly sustainably, but there's a very long history of doing things "because that's just the way it's always been done" and I don't see that changing anytime soon, I'm afraid. I mean if you look at some of the tutorials out there, a lot of it is just appalling in terms of maintainability, efficiency and security (and that includes some very popular frameworks). There are a lot of cases where short-term, and often short-sighted, convenience trumps long-term goals.