I think he was trying to show capability more than quality.
Popularity != proof of goodness.
I never said it was the greatest language ever. I'll take Ruby or Lisp over PHP any day. I was simply saying that the OP's post is framed as if PHP was generally considered a useless newbie language, and that using it for a startup is somehow noteworthy.
No one likes it but it gets the job done in a clumsy and amateurish way. It's the BASIC of web programming. Those other so-called sexy languages have actually been designed rather than having features bolted on later, those features are designed to fit into the language from the start.
some of the biggest sites out there are running on PHP just fine.
Popularity != proof of goodness.