| PHP's main problem is its very shallow learning curve. The 5840 built-in functions provide easy ways to get many useful things done with minimal dabbling. In other words, one can be a "scripter" instead of a "programmer", and for many projects that's 100% OK. Other languages automatically filter out "scripters" from their field by demanding a certain level of mental abstraction to produce anything moderately useful. While there is absolutely no difference between a good programmer using PHP, or a good programmer using any other language/environment, but there is a big difference between the median levels and below. This in turn lowers the reputation of the field, and it becomes uncool to put PHP on one's resume, therefore the more capable programmers propagate out to other languages, which further lowers the median, etc. This happened with Perl, too... |