I personally see nothing at all wrong with PHP. I'll go read some of the other posts, but I wonder what's so bad about it. (OK, except that built in function names have no pattern to the naming.)
I think people hate it precisely because it's so easy to get started with. Have you ever met people who, the more obscure something is, the more they like it?
Linux is now too mainstream for them, so they use hurd. You see it with health food too - regular health food is too mainstream, so now you must eat local. Soy used to be eaten only by health nuts, now that it's mainstream, they say not to eat it.
These are people who hate all the regular languages and love the obscure ones (I won't name them for fear of flame wars). You can like an obscure language, but if you also hate the regular ones, you just want to be different and that's all.