On his blog, Jonathan Ellis shares with us a few ideas he has about why PHP sucks.

Two technologies I've steered clear of are any J2EE stack and PHP. I've seen enough of each to know that I'd be immensely frustrated with either. Briefly, although they are quite different, neither is elegant, and elegance counts.

Recently, though, I had to spend a few days extending a small amount of PHP code. (I'm just glad for two of those qualifiers: "few" and "small.") The more I used it, the less impressed I was, which is why I don't think a longer experience would make this post any more favorable to PHP.

This is far from an exhaustive list. It may have some reasoning in common with other voices of reason, but I'm writing this primarily from a Python developer's perspective. So, I won't waste time bashing PHP for being dynamic, which some Java zealots do; nor will I fault it for mixing code and markup, which also has its uses (and Spyce recognizes this). PHP's problems are much, much deeper.

It's always good to get an "outsiders" perspecitve on things, and he doesn't hold back. Starting off by saying that both PHP the language, and PHP the environment, suck isn't going to gain him any friends around here. However, he does back up these accusations with a few reasons, some which, simply presented from the other side, would be strengths.

What do you think? Does he make a good case?