[drivingmenuts]

People have been doing that with PHP for years.

Yes, it's true that there's a ton of really bad code out there. But that's a measure of it's popularity.

There's also a ton of bad C and Java out there.

And yet, no one dismisses those languages because of that.

[wwweston]

As far as I can tell, anecdotes, social proof, and familiarity play far more a role in the reputations of almost every language/tool than most engineers seem prepared to admit.

(But don't worry, dear reader -- you're probably the exception!)

PHP gets singled out for a bit of extra abuse (some perhaps justifiably, some not so much), but it's far from the only language whose popular conception is not so much based on thoughtful evaluation.