My somewhat glib comment was meant to point out that even had PHP been very fast back when PHP hate was a popular past time it would still have been hated for other reasons.
Ruby was (very) slow back then (notably and measurably slower than PHP, Python, or Perl) and people still loved it. The warts on PHP that got the most bad press were rarely related to performance.
So, yes PHP used to be slower than it is today, by a lot. But, speed wouldn't have immunized it against the criticism leveled against it. All the effort going into fixing performance for PHP coincided with fixing some of the bigger warts of the language, as well...so much of the hate for PHP has dwindled in recent years.
The fact that people building for the web are much less often required to work in PHP also reduces the hate.