[olavk]

Many both pro and con PHP articles are missing the point about PHP. PHP is a great success in spite of its obvious shortcomings because it supports iterative development. (Saying that language choice is less important for a project than other factors doesn't explain anything - all other things being equal, a language with fewer traps and idiosyncrasies would be the better choice.)

The killer feature of PHP is that you can FTP to the server and start adding arbitrary code to a static html file by adding a single tag. Other frameworks deliberately makes this more complicated with more overhead, because they want to promote a better architecture with separation of concerns and so on. Basically these frameworks have "encoded" the waterfall-method, because they assume you know from the start that you need a complex site. PHP supports iterative improvement from the simplest site (static HTML files on a server) to arbitrary complex code, without requiring major speedbumps where you have to rethink the whole app.

This also mirrors how many web developers have learnt to code - starts out with making html/css, then gradually learn php by inserting simple snippets of code to make banner rotate and so on. (The "right way" of course would be to take a pause for a few years to get a CS degree before adding the banner rotator.)

When an app grows beyond a certain level of complexity, changing to a better platform might improve quality, but then you have already made an investment in existing code.

[crazygringo]

Thank you! Iterative development is key.

Out of any language I've ever used, PHP has most allowed me to just get stuff done fast. It certainly isn't elegant, but it works. And even as you grow and scale up, as long as you constantly refactor at critical moments, you can avoid spaghetti code just fine.