Why do Python programmers hate PHP?

I am a Python programmer who started learning about web programming using PHP. I probably have a say in this topic (even if I don’t hate PHP). Correct me if anything here is wrong or imprecise.

First, let’s say PHP and Python are languages designed for different purposes. While PHP is mostly useful in web programming, Python is a Swiss Army knife which can be used in a wide range of scenarios covering almost everything, including web programming. That is why they have different syntaxes, styles and libraries. Since Python is a multifunctional language, it looks more like other general programming languages than PHP, while PHP has some convenient syntaxes specifically for web programming. Those syntaxes may not cater to general programmers when they are used to the Python style, which is probably why people think PHP is ugly.

But to be honest, PHP was one of the mainstream languages for the web about 10 years ago, which is when I started learning web programming. If you have ever lived in that era, you know there were other similar languages such as ASP and JSP. That was a time when webpages started going from static to dynamic, and the most obvious way to do that is to embed dynamic content into the static one. That’s why people embed PHP, ASP and JSP in HTML pages. It’s not quite easy to imagine how Python can be embedded in such a way. After all, Python is not designed for that purpose.

Then you would probably wonder why Python plays a role in web programming nowadays. I think that’s because people now have modern ways of writing manageable, extensible and scalable web applications with the help from template engines, just as they were writing general applications. People now put more effort on the architect and application logic rather than page rendering. Those tasks are delegated to template engines. As a result, fully-featured languages get popular in web programming because they do better in other parts of the website and equally well (or better) even in page rendering. Developers no longer need to “embed” a dynamic language into a static HTML, which they think is a ugly way of doing things. But that is the very style of PHP, ASP and JSP. Considering the fact that more and more people now use Python as their first language to study programming, it’s understandable that they feel uncomfortable with something that looks drastically different.

But is that a hate? It probably depends. I’ve met programmers who publicly scoff at PHP. However, as a Python programmer, I don’t hate PHP even if most of my work is done with Python these days. I still use PHP if I want to serve something dynamic quickly. There doesn’t seem to be a quicker way of web prototyping. After all, PHP is designed for the web.

Language wars are stupid. Languages are designed for different purposes to satisfy people’s different needs. If a language becomes entirely useless, then programmers will migrate to other languages and that language will die. There doesn’t have to be a hate or a war. If a language is still alive, then it must be useful somewhere. Programmers shouldn’t be forced to use certain languages. Pick what you like and like what you pick.