[Chris2048]

> There are people out there writing Python just as bad as what you think of as bad PHP.

By that logic: there are people "out there" jamming pencils up their noses, therefore a shovel is just as good a writing implement as a pencil..

[leetrout]

Sure. It’s up to the end user to use the tools in an appropriate way.

There are a ton of inconsistencies in the PHP standard library and I’m not defending that but that doesn’t make it “bad” as you insinuated.

[Chris2048]

Then lets look at those semantics: what is bad, and is anything ever bad? Because I think mostly all frameworks are pretty easy in the small, it's how they help/hinder with larger projects that demonstrates their worth.

On that basis, sure, it's up to the user to figure out what's appropriate; and a shovel is not an appropriate writing implement - you could say it's even a "bad" one.