It's not just people in general who think PHP sucks, but the original creator himself. Some of his quotes are a goldmine (if this was addressed in the article apologies, it is receiving the HN hug of death right now):
"PHP is about as exciting as your toothbrush. You use it every day, it does the job, it is a simple tool, so what? Who would want to read about toothbrushes?"
"I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests."
"PHP 8 is significantly better because it contains a lot less of my code."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf
"PHP is about as exciting as your toothbrush. You use it every day, it does the job, it is a simple tool, so what? Who would want to read about toothbrushes?"
"I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests."
"PHP 8 is significantly better because it contains a lot less of my code."