Well, that does make some sense: if something bothers you so much that you'd "fly into a rage over it", you would avoid using it as much as possible (and PHP is not like JavaScript which has no real alternative).
Even that does make some sense: if, on a first look, you see something you deeply dislike, you probably will also avoid using it in the first place.
As a personal example, I never learned Go because, when I first looked at it (IIRC, it was when I had to use it to run a Heartbleed detector), I deeply disliked the way it required developers to organize their source code (a single per-language directory mixing all projects together, instead of the per-project directories I have always used); I understand this might have changed later, but in the meantime I invested my time in learning another programming language, and so far haven't found a need to look at Go again.
And it isn't like rust is particularly hit by it, either. You'd think people writing PHP or Java hate life, if you only went by what you are likely to see in our social sites.