First, lets try to be a bit more specific. Does PHP the language suck, or does PHP the environment suck?
They both suck. In fact, they suck for the same reason: PHP-the-language and PHP-the-environment both grew by accretion of random features, not by any purposeful design for orthogonality. So you have idiot “features” like magic quotes (“Assuming it to be on, or off, affects portability. Use get_magic_quotes_gpc() to check for this, and code accordingly) and register globals (same disclaimer applies, only more so). Trying to write “portable” php code is such a disaster that it’s no wonder almost nobody tries; you can’t even code for a least-common-denominator version because (a) so much is subject to change on the whim of the site’s config file and (b) even if it weren’t, the PHP designers change the defaults almost as often, even within minor version releases. (E.g., the registerglobals change for 4.2.) The PHP community realizes this to a degree, even if the fanboys won’t admit it. PHP5 uptake is almost as glacial as MySQL4 was/is because it breaks so much code. One of the biggest way
