I'm more of a Django man, worked with Flask only when i had to. There's no "wrong" or "right" in this…
There are people out there writing Python just as bad as what you think of as bad PHP.
One dev I knew insisted everything must be a list comprehension — including all for loops in regular flow control. That was Not Good(tm).
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Edit: please read the parent comments for context. GP said there’s no right or wrong and OP said then why not use PHP and I said it’s not wrong.
By that logic: there are people "out there" jamming pencils up their noses, therefore a shovel is just as good a writing implement as a pencil..
There are a ton of inconsistencies in the PHP standard library and I’m not defending that but that doesn’t make it “bad” as you insinuated.
On that basis, sure, it's up to the user to figure out what's appropriate; and a shovel is not an appropriate writing implement - you could say it's even a "bad" one.
I started using PHP around 1998 and quit cold-turkey about a decade later for Python after noticing across the board quality improvements on every project. PHP isn’t terrible but using it requires constant diligence and few teams had the extra time and skills to use it safely.
Been a long time since our chats at DC Python. Hope you’ve been doing well, sir!