What? What happened? There are nice thing done in PHP out there, as there are nice thing done in Perl, Java and even ASP (*lol*).

The problem isn't with the language. Actually, there are a lot of problems with the language, but that's not the main problem. It's the community. It attracted a lot of second-rate programmers.

The result is that even Zend.com (which is supposed to be the top of the PHP community) published an article demonstrating how to do authentication with privilege levels where the level is stored in a cookie--massively insecure practice. This article appears to have been removed (thankfully), but was up for years before then.

Here is another bright and shining member of the PHP community:

Cons [for using PHP]
- Requires enlightened management (of the sort that don't get nervous when you mention "free").
- PHP developers need to be prepared for assault from "theoreticians" in other languages. Just remember: "Well then this (point browser at PHP page) must be impossible then...".

If the only cons you can think of are that you need better management and have to tell knowledgeable people to shove off, you lack imagination. The "theoreticians" aren't bugging you because they want to feel superior. They like these things because they know it makes their job easier (not merely possible, but easier).

That's the main problem with PHP--the community has a high dimwit-ratio.