Ha ha! Is that directed at me?! :) Partially guilty I suppose because I've never written a production PHP program.

After learning PHP for code golf, I remember being shocked while trawling through 3000 verbose, and often appallingly inconsistent, built-in functions. I may also have been influenced by a "PHP training wheels without the bike" web site back then. Though I've never written a production PHP program, I hope my perfect record in PHP golf competitions (3 victories from 3 games) gives some credibility to my PHP badmouthing. :)