Yeah most of the PHP hate came from old school PHP 3 code co-mingled with HTML 2/3 that didn't take advantages of the simple OOP added. PHP 4 took decent steps but couldn't shake that stigmata. PHP 5 and some good MVC frameworks (written in 4 and 5) made great advances and 7/8 and the spinoffs make the language pretty good for any scripting or web job. These days I prefer JVM based languages but if I needed a quick web task with minimal overhead PHP would still be in the top 3 options.
But some old timers (genX) still today bemoan php as if it had no progress made.
But some old timers (genX) still today bemoan php as if it had no progress made.