The clichéd example is, of course, the well-known exercise of getting a language to print "Hello World". In Java, that's:

      class HelloWorldApp {
         public static void main(String[] args) {
            System.out.println("Hello World!");
         }
      }
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It's a cheap shot to point out how syntactically overburdened that is, but it does illustrate a far more important point: that it's *cognitively* over-burdened too...

-- Damian Conway in Builder AU interview (cited at The Lighter Side of Perl Culture (Part IV): Golf)

No, really, I don't want an identification division. The problem with identification division is it really puts a crimp in Perl's poetry, or in Cobalt poetry. How many poems can you start off identification division? One.

-- Larry Wall in State of the Onion 2000

Bod, as alluded to by the quotes above, when I scored a Java job during the early Internet boom years, its verbosity and enforced structure somehow spookily reminded me of Cobol, which I'd used in my first government job. Though I much preferred Java to Cobol, both languages somehow made me feel oppressed ... so I felt relieved when I was able to escape to the fresh open fields of C++ and Perl.

Oh, and I think your instincts regarding PHP are spot on. :)