[drostie]

Of course, this isn't an article critical of PHP and I'm sure those defenders would just as readily state 'every time PHP appears on Hacker News the PHP-haters come out."

While I tend to agree that I would not use PHP for new projects, I would disagree that it's indefensible. All you need to defend it is, "it's easy." In the sense of, "it's nearby, it's within reach." If it happens to be the language installed on your system, its use is automatically defensible on those grounds alone.

It might not nurture you and love you and cherish you; hell, it may abuse you at times, as any language with idiosyncrasies does. It might even have more idiosyncrasies than other languages do. But those do not make a relationship indefensible -- merely difficult. And in some cases, the difficulty makes the love even more binding -- which is why we still have people who program in low-level languages, for example, even though those have all the more tendency to abuse you for the tiniest mistake you make.

[mikeash]

The choice to use PHP may be defensible. The PHP ecosystem may be. But I don't believe the language itself is. It's a subtle but important distinction: there are some good reasons to use PHP (although IMO more good reasons not to), but there are few or no good reasons for PHP's problems.