Having run MySQL servers and suffered the problems for many years before I finally gave up, I don't think it's my inability that's the issue here.

As a counterpoint, many successful companies run PHP in production but I don't think anyone would claim that means it's a good language.

(One example of where MySQL lack{s,ed}: Postgres with a functional index on a field handled the exact same query on the exact same data a couple of orders of magnitude faster than MySQL on the exact same box.)