Most large companies with well-oiled legacy systems actually are not that bad to work with. I've seen the guts of a large PHP system, and while it was still re

Most large companies with well-oiled legacy systems actually are not that bad to work with. I've seen the guts of a large PHP system, and while it was still re-inventing the wheel all over the place, they had still solved all of their problems and had established practices that encouraged stable business. Not interesting, but neither are consolidate businesses to begin with. PHP will cease to be gross when it's not just the large implementations that are very nicely done. This is not the PHP that exists in the vast seas between these islands. PHP is not something that a rotational employee or someone who is career-conscious will choose or accept for long. They want to work at your company for a while. This can be good. PHP is a career limiter in a way and I think the cringe reaction is a natural tendency to want to open up the conversation to see if what could be a good rotational job is also a toolchain dead end. Career conscious programmers don't want dead ends. The gripe is and always will be that PHP encourages bad practices because it includes a bunch of "features" that are undeniably prone to bad habits. It's not personal. Really, we don't want companies using PHP well to die. We don't want the programmers using PHP to go away. We want PHP to stay put because better tools are out there, and anything that perpetuates the use of PHP in new products feels gross. It feels especially gross to the career-conscious young ones. Sorry.