[urban_alien]

Not strange at all! Leave those assumptions behind, take a look at symfony/console and minicli. PHP is not shiny or snarky as Python, but resilient and "boring". The "dirtness" that you are feeling is just a way to keep those insufferable people that you mentioned out.

[zlg_codes]

I mean, to some degree I see where you're coming from. PHP extensions can be written in C, so you can drop down to lower level as needed. Hardly different than Python in that regard. PHP is just something I've always just used in a Web serving context, so pre-populated $_GET, $_POST, etc.

I would hope argv and argc at least are passed by default in PHP programs on the command line. New experiment unlocked I guess.