Critique is fine but it just need to be based on other things than taste.

Point to a thing you cant do with PHP and you have valid criticism.

Critiquing PHP because you you think it's ugly or not elegant enough is only valid if you care about such things and then you are by definition a snob.

"Point to a thing you can't do" is bitterly disingenuous. Nobody's saying you can't do things in PHP, they're saying it's extremely disadvantageous to do so. Technical debt can't be wished away by screaming about "haters" and it's juvenile to try.

And that is the point. For most people it's not disadvantagous so they use it.

Having spent a very long time in the PHP community I doubt that quite a lot. I am strongly skeptical of the notion that most are in the headspace to be able to evaluate alternatives effectively if they know they exist. Because most of them sound like you in your posts in this thread: circle the wagons and call everyone who says PHP isn't a smart choice a "hater". It's a very insular, very screwed-up social dynamic that resists change (despite the efforts of some really smart folks like @fabpot to drag your average PHP programmer into some semblance of good practices).

Listen here.

I reacted to the typical criticism made about PHP which we saw again in this thread. The OP was about well written PHP and of course it turns into a PHP is bad.

Well boo freaking hoo.

PHP is a great tool. If you dont like it anymore dont use it. If you fear it will hinder your companies future success even though it seems to serve FB amongst others just fine for a while, dont use it.

But please, please, please, dont confuse your own personal opinion about what is good and bad with the fact that for many people PHP is a great tool.

With the typical reaction. "Thousands of sites use PHP just fine". "I don't care about the quality of libraries or the design of a language, and if you do, you're a snob". Trite.

And I doubt I, and many here, will ever make or work with a company which can have the leisure to rewrite the language implementation.

Thats not the typical reaction. The typical reaction is to go on a hate fest about PHP just as it happened in this thread purely based on some self-established criteria for why it is so bad.

Case in point. A post about high quality PHP gets turned into a discussion about PHP as a language.

You're reframing all criticism towards PHP to "can it be done with x" from "is it best done with x".

> Point to a thing you cant do with PHP and you have valid criticism.

s/PHP/Brainfuck

Does your argument still hold? Are you now a snob?

The OP was about beautifully written PHP code.

The comments I am reacting to are those who are reframing that discussion into a discussion about PHP as a tool in general.

So no I am not reframing anything. I am reacting to the reframing if anything.