> Can we just agree on "PHP used to suck but it was very easy to work with, reason why it got traction. Things got better over the years and those that only saw the early years, rightfully only remember how much it sucked, while those that use modern versions see how much it has changed"?

This comment is super interesting to me, not because it contains anything I haven't heard before, but because the phrasing managed to break through my "bubble" of being the type of PHP naysayer you're talking about by making me realize just how similar this trend is to some other tech products that I'm not nearly as down on (I use btrfs on my personal machines, and I worked for several years at MongoDB, both of which seem to suffer from similar views of "fool me once and I'll refuse to ever give you another chance, no matter how much changes"). I still probably won't end up using PHP myself, given that I don't really do much web development anymore, but you've at least gotten one person to reconsider their opinion on PHP, so thank you for that!