If you’ve spent any time around programmers, you may have noticed that many are vocal opponents of PHP. In many ways, PHP is the Nickelback of programming languages – somehow widely popular, yet widely hated at the same time. In my experience, most people who defend PHP as a good programming language don’t have much experience with other languages and thus have no basis for comparison. While PHP can certainly get the job done, there’s a lot of legitimate reasons people dread working with it – here are what I see as the top reason why programmers hate PHP.
1. Popularity Means Widespread Abuse
PHP is incredibly popular and widespread and has been for quite some time. Being the backbone of WordPress is one of the biggest reasons for its popularity – currently 28% of websites are run on WordPress, a number that has been steadily rising.