yeah but that's what bothers me. you've got a site founded by the guy who wrote "The Python Paradox" and everybody there thinks it's interesting to discuss PHP. come on! it doesn't matter if it's wrong or not. there is nothing interesting about PHP. there's nothing to learn there. there's no story. even my rant was just Economics 101.

trying to extract lessons from the design of PHP is like trying to win the lottery by wearing a trucker hat because you saw some dude in a trucker hat win the lottery. there's nothing there! you might as well be reading tea leaves. which is what I said in the rant, but you didn't get the point. you might as well be posting a picture of some tea leaves and then having a discussion about that.

yes a good enough conversationalist can extract something meaningful from anything, and that's the real challenge I was after when I wrote the rant, but if your goal is to write something interesting about what you saw on Hacker News, let me tell you, Hacker News does not make it easy for you by talking about PHP.