[JeremyMorgan]

I know it's "cool" to hate PHP, but anyone asking this question obviously hasn't used it. It's a tool that solves problems fast and cheap. It's not for every application but it fits for some VERY well. And most of PHP's problems are the newb programmers it attracts, just like JavaScript. The language itself has tons of quirks but you can write good PHP just as well as anything else, and you can solve certain problems very fast with it.

[jpgvm]

The thing is there are better languages that solve the same problems PHP solves at the same speed or faster. This is why Ruby become so popular.

Javascript is a sad story though, it's an abysmal language (even with ES6, though that does make things better) but it enjoys a monopoly over the browser runtime space.

I think asking why anyone would start a new project in PHP is a very reasonable thing to ask.

If you want quick and dirty there is Ruby + Sinatra, Python + Flask or Go + Martini. All of which are safer, have less 'quirks' as you say and are all faster. None of them require any more work than the current PHP alternatives.

PHP may be superior to some languages in some regards, but it's definitely no longer the king of the hill of prototyping languages.