>> Here where I live, about 80% of webdev jobs are PHP.

I'm getting the impression that this is why a lot of people hate PHP - Money. People don't like that the market is full of money wasted on an inferior language. Perhaps there's a bit of envy in that, perhaps not.

The winners in the marketplace aren't always the best, and it's not easy to change minds. People get religious about the things that make their living, whether it be a programming language, certification/designation or some other thing.

But Atheists aren't going to convert many Christians and Christians aren't going to convert many Scientologists.

In the end, you have to work within the parameters of the market or create your own. I guess for some people, like the OP, it's easier to vent. Nothing wrong with that - we should all speak our minds, but it's not necessarily going to be effective in converting anyone.

Look at the resulting discussion here, the OP's either preaching to the choir, or his message is falling on deaf ears. I don't see a lot of 'a-ha, he's right, I'm switching now' posts.

People hate PHP because it's an incredibly stupid and frustrating language to use, and most of the people who use it don't know anything else. The money comes from them fucking things up, and their boss having to call in people who know what they're doing to fix it (aka. hack it back into some semblance of "working"). The amount of waste that goes on in most PHP shops is what irks me - use the right tool, spend at least 50% less time working around stupid quirks.

> the OP's either preaching to the choir, or his message is falling on deaf ears.

That was the point of the post. If he points people to it, and they read it but still disagree that PHP is crap, then there's obviously no hope for them.

>>The amount of waste that goes on in most PHP shops is what irks me - use the right tool, spend at least 50% less time working around stupid quirks.

Yeah, but why would you care unless you're begrudgingly participating in the PHP industry? It's not your problem unless you make it your problem - i.e., if you're so against it, don't work in a PHP shop, don't take PHP contracts. Problem solved - if other people want to use lame/bad languages, who cares?

The impression I'm getting is that a segment people who hate on PHP are participating in the PHP economy because there aren't as many local opportunities in {insert language here}. To me, that's not much different from the guy who's stuck working in a "lowly" coffee shop because he can't find a job in his field of study, which of course, makes him entitled to be rude to customers and his fellow employees.

Even those of us entirely outside the PHP economy (mobile, desktop, big-iron server) occasionally stumble into a monster of a mess that some PHP idiot left behind, and have to clean it up (usually by just replacing it outright, because PHP isn't worth maintaining).

The money is nice, but after watching the ridiculous waste of PHP idiocy for the Nth time, you can't help but want to get people to stop.

And that's not counting all of the messes that are inflicted on you as a user of PHP - security holes and password breaches or having to interface with some crappy API to get stuff done.

At least with PHP it's likely to be some vaguely HTTP/POST-ish interface, not some XML/WSDL monstrosity...

No, it's not the money. It's comfort, and the opportunity for less compromises when picking jobs. I want to be able to choose between three Ruby/Python/whatever shops and pick one with the coolest people and coolest projects, rather than having one Ruby/Python and two PHP shops to choose from.

And, unlike you, I don't think these articles are pointless. I hope they help PHP get more bad reputation among coders, and peer pressure will do the rest.

To paraphrase something Neil DeGrasse Tyson said to Richard Dawkins: If you want to change someone's opinion about something, you need to be sensitive to the state of mind of the person you're trying to convince.

Bashing and negativity is not the way to do it.

You'll get much farther showing a PHP person something more interesting (whether it be Rails, Django, or whatever) and highlighting all the cool things about it. Because that person will not be on the defensive, his/her mind will be way more likely to have that 'Wow, that's so cool I should try it' moment.