[nolok]

I agree with you and I think it goes even further than that: get me from hello world to mockup of my final app to my final app. Coding in php isn't pretty, but it's fast, even once you get past that hello world part.

Look at all the questions on stackoverflow from total beginners: they don't understand much of what they are doing yet, but they already have working forms and several pages and, well, results.

Of course, that's also part of what makes people hate php.