Ahhh, this makes me nostalgic! As always, PHP isn't the best language... it's just flexible.

I think of php as being a unix-y way to do web development. It's great for making a thin layer of glue between mature tools each of which "do one thing well," such as (in the case of PW's stack) ImageMagick utilities, phantomjs, youtube-dl, etc.

The other popular languages seem to encourage web developers to solve more problems themselves at the app tier, and then manage the resultant thicker "glue" layers by using OOP abstractions.

I'm not saying one way is necessarily better, but I do think that php is in some sense more unix-y as a web development language than, say, either java or ruby/RoR.

As you'd probably expect, the HN discussion of this article looks like a crusty sock full of node, python and ruby fan boys frothing at the mouth about register globals, parameter order and some stupid analogy about a two headed hammer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6279241