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I left the insane PHP world quite a while ago and wrote a post detailing some of my reasons. Even though PHP has improved a lot since then, the foundations still suck. For example, the vast majority of people writing PHP are still "web designers" who know nothing about writing proper code. And I just don't get it when people tell me I have to be patient because PHP is improving - why wait that PHP becomes better when you can work with better tools now? I get much better salaries and enjoy the projects I work on a lot more since I dropped PHP. It's just not worth it.

PHP is getting better but still has a long way to go before I can say I would choose it over other languages. Besides many of the things already mentioned here, I have a few more basic gripes with the language, namely its community/"ecosystem", Composer, namespaces and autoloading. I wrote about it in more detail and as expected (unfortunately), it generated lots of criticism from some fan boys, as well as some other more rational defensive comments from not-so-fired-up readers. I also wrote about what I consider to be the mentality of these folks who defend PHP as if their life depended on it, and how I hope they someday can see the light.

PHP is getting better but still has a long way to go before I can say I would choose it over other languages. Besides many of the things already mentioned here, I have a few more basic gripes with the language, namely its community/"ecosystem", Composer, namespaces and autoloading. I wrote about it in more detail and as expected (unfortunately), it generated lots of criticism from some fan boys, as well as some other more rational defensive comments from not-so-fired-up readers. I also wrote about what I consider to be the mentality of these folks who defend PHP as if their life depended on it, and how I hope they someday can see the light.

You can fix that slow boot problem quite easily, you know.

Just do the mkinitramfs part, and you'll be fine.

Unfortunately, most computer users are stupid and don't have a clue about what they're doing.

In order to make more moeny, companies want their programs to be easier and easier to use, so that more and more stupid users will buy their programs. Can't really blame them for that, after all, they want to make money! But making a program for stupid users is not an easy task. Programmers have to take into account every stupid thing the user might do and that causes the software to get bloated. I wrote something about this in my blog, some time ago: http://borfast.com/node/23

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

This seems pretty obvious but I constantly see people leaving stuff turned on when they're not using it.

Leaving the TV set on when you're not watching, leaving the light on when you're not in the room, leaving the water running while you brush your teeth, you name it, wate of energy and natural resources seems to flow in some people's bloodstream!

And those poor bastards who use that lame-excuse-for-an-instant-messaging-program called MSN Messenger have a special way of wasting energy: leaving their computers on all the time so they can have their nicknames online. Why? Want to receive messages that are sent to you while you're not logged in? Use ICQ. I know the new version of MSN Messenger (or Windows Live Messenger, or whatever) stores messages for you while you're away but ICQ has always done it. Or even better, why not use e-mail, which serves exactly that purpose - sending messages that can be read at a later time?