Tim Bray writes a piece describing what he dislikes about PHP: “… all the PHP code I’ve seen in that experience has been messy, unmaintainable crap. Spaghetti SQL wrapped in spaghetti PHP wrapped in spaghetti HTML, replicated in slightly-varying form in dozens of places.”

Harry Fuecks counters at SitePoint with what he likes about PHP.

I don’t get into platform zealotry one way or another whether it be OS (I use Windows, Linux and Mac) or programming languages. Languages are tools. I like PHP for web development but it’s one of many tools.