[nostrademons]

I have to use the man pages for most languages when I'm learning them. PHP is fairly unique among languages I've worked with (and that doesn't include C) in that I have to keep using the man pages even after I've become fairly fluent with it.

In Python, by contrast, that fwrite call is just:

  fp.write(text)

In some ways, the religion metaphor is pretty apt, since the strongest critics of a religion are usually those raised in the religion who consciously reject it once they realize what else is out there. I learned web programming with PHP, and I've done several fairly large projects with it (the largest had ~100k registered users and ~250k hits/day at its peak). I ended up hating it enough that when it came time to look for full-time positions, I explicitly said "no PHP" and disqualified any jobs that used it.

(And actually...of late, everything I write is of world class importance, but that's an artifact of my current project and the fact that it's sorta taken over my life. I used to write quick & dirty stuff much more often, and I usually used Django for it.)

[jacquesm]

Same here, but I can't deny that PHP made me more money than all those other sexy languages combined.

[nostrademons]

I'd argue that being in a market that people wanted made you money, not PHP. I dunno what the timescale of your successes was - I think PHP actually was the best option for webapps between about 1998 and 2004 - but there are better technologies available now.

Java and C++ made me money, PHP made me bupkis. Python at least is fun.

[jacquesm]

Building camarades.com, now ww.com in march '98. The webcam software was in C++.