[howeyc]

"If PHP sucks so profoundly, why is it powering so much of the internet?"

The same reason that Excel vba sucks so badly but is powering so much of internal company "applications."

A lot of these sites are first started by a small group of people, looking to get something working ASAP. They do what is easiest, setup LAMP and get hacking. At the time, it's the quickest way to getting something workable.

Inevitably, you end up with a similar situation as you do when your BA takes it upon himself to create an indespensible excel vba spreadsheet. The cost of redoing it in something better is hard to justify, because atleast the current application works. Even though you know it has reached a point where having it as a real application would probably be best since so much of your company relies on its information and analysis.

So here we are, stuck with a shitload of crap written in PHP and Excel VBA, but it doesn't matter. Because all that crap works, and that's the goal. Not maintainability, elegance, programming cred, etc.