[ChikkaChiChi]

Can anyone please point me in the direction of an open source project on Github that can showcase to me the 'elegance' of all these other programming languages that have the scale and adoption of some of the more well-known PHP community pieces?

I feel like so much of the bias towards PHP is either an unfair comparison (language to 'rails') or a bad taste left in the mouth because the person worked with a nasty domain specific language like Wordpress, Drupal, Magento, etc.

PHP is like pop music; there is a lot of it and 'true' artists think it's beneath them. Nevertheless the public demands and craves it, and most of the big web applications that are open source run on PHP.

If you feel like PHP is a blight on the world, by all means go out there and disrupt the community by launching something that gets widespread adoption the way PHP software has.

[Corrado]

My personal bias against PHP has been born out of every single PHP project that I've encountered has been horrible. Everything from simple one page apps to complex projects has just been an unmaintainable mess.

Several years ago I was told to use Magento on a project. Great, Magento is a mature PHP app and I'll get to see some great PHP code. Nope, I was horrified by what I saw and dreaded coming to work everyday and having to deal with that mess of a system.

I have a hard time getting behind a language that everyone uses but no one uses well.

[lmm]

> Can anyone please point me in the direction of an open source project on Github that can showcase to me the 'elegance' of all these other programming languages that have the scale and adoption of some of the more well-known PHP community pieces?

Just look at MoinMoin's source and see how much more elegant it is than MediaWiki.

> either an unfair comparison (language to 'rails')

Why is that unfair?

> a bad taste left in the mouth because the person worked with a nasty domain specific language like Wordpress, Drupal, Magento, etc.

If that's how PHP is used in practice then it's fair to complain about PHP.

[adamors]

> Why is that unfair?

Because PHP isn't actually used like that. Most engineers use frameworks (like Symfony, Zend, Yii, Cake, Laravel etc.) or at least components of these frameworks if they work on something very complex. NIH is a thing of the past.

> If that's how PHP is used in practice then it's fair to complain about PHP.

If shitty developers use a language then it's fair to complain about said language? Really?

[tomgruner]

I don't take php much more seriously than I take pop music. They both exist. At one point in my life I enjoyed them both immensely. Now I have chosen music that better fits my tastes and solutions that better meet my needs.

I don't choose my music by popularity, and won't try point you to popular repositories. You need to look at your needs, and decide what works for those needs. If that is php, that is great. No need to look further. If php doesn't cut it for you, you will have to decide what you need and find a solution that works for that.