It is rather telling that PHP's design is based on whatever was popular at the time. The original design was based on Perl, further additions and the stdlib we

It is rather telling that PHP's design is based on whatever was popular at the time. The original design was based on Perl, further additions and the stdlib were designed like C++, the class system is a lot like Java, and recent features have been clearly inspired by Python. I've met more than enough PHP programmers who genuinely tout "it's free" and "you don't have to declare types" as unique advantages, or are unaware that you can even build a website in anything else.