[mgkimsal]

"Why not direct your effort at improving the language instead?"

Or indeed developing a successor. Loads of people bitch about how bad PHP is - I see very few efforts to even come up with a better alternative.

[mjburgess]

They already exist (python, ruby, ...). Improvement is the only way the PHP commuity as the php community will progress.

[berkes]

Sadly, for that PHP-community, many developers outgrow PHP and move on.

Instead of the developers growing and improving, and so pulling the entire community upwards, many simply choose to leave. I've had this personally with Drupal: many, many years did I poor a (joined!) effort into getting proper TDD, OOP, deployment strategies into this CMS, but in the end I gave up. I mean: why put effort into making Drupal something it does not want to be; while a few weeks of learning a new language, the thing I wanted Drupal to become, already exists.

I think PHP is mostly a station in the career of many webdeveloper, before they move on to what are often considered "more professional environments". Sure, there are a few brilliant and very professional PHP-devs who stick around. But relatively seen, they are a tiny minority.