Something needs to pay the bills. If a PHP project takes longer to complete (I'm not saying it does), is harder to maintain, etc than an equivalent project writ

Something needs to pay the bills. If a PHP project takes longer to complete (I'm not saying it does), is harder to maintain, etc than an equivalent project written in another language, then you will simply be less productive in PHP. This is the case for any language. No matter how much you enjoy something, if a design choice you made (like choosing PHP, or Perl, or C++) means that you spend more of your time on the project, you've made a mistake. The purpose of a language is to remove as much of the incidental complexity of the project as possible, leaving only the (more enjoyable) intrinsic complexity.