One mistake was that PHP was chosen, when it really was unfit for the task at hand. Another one was that CMSes like WP or Drupal were shoehorned into projects that were really unfit for them. etc. But also being unable to upgrade underlying PHP versions due to breaking changes, or just p*ss-poor, bug-ridden PEAR packages. As well as the language design prohibiting proper TDD, isolation, etc.
I explicitly said that PHP was but one of the causes. But the language-design and the community certainly did play a significant role. I explicitly never said that you cannot achieve properly designed and maintainable software with PHP. I know you can, because I've also encountered many of those.
> Another one was that CMSes like WP or Drupal were shoehorned into projects that were really unfit for them.
I think this hits closer to the mark than the PHP blame. PHP is just a tool, WP or Drupal are very large codebases that each have their own inherent problems that you are not going to code your way around.
FWIW I've used PHP for a decade and a half and it never let me down.
I would imagine that your team picking WP or Drupal and attempting to shoehorn in your use case had more to do with your projects failing than PHP itself.
I see that happen a lot in the wild, and not just with PHP.
I bet you could have picked a python/node/c#/go CMS with a similar outcome.
I consider WP and Drupal (And Joomla and magento etc) all part of the PHP ecosystem. I consider them part of PHP.
Just like Rails is part of the Ruby ecosystem. Technically, it is wrong to blame Ruby for poor design decisions made in Rails. Like Rails monkeypatching stdlib classes. But Rails can monkeypatch stdlib classes because Ruby lets it. It did a lot of monkeypatching stdlib classes, because it was common thing to do in the Ruby ecosystem back then. So, I therefore, place just as much blame on those poor decisions in Rails as I place them on the language, Ruby. Whats more: I blame both for promoting this idea in the first place. A new dev may open the Rails code and conclude "if a popular framework is doing X, X is probably a good way to solve my issue".
The latter is, and always has been, my largest gripe with PHP. No, WP is not a good example to learn proper PHP development, but it is the thing most new PHP devs encounter PHP and are then stuck with horrible "best practices" for the rest of their carreer.
One mistake was that PHP was chosen, when it really was unfit for the task at hand. Another one was that CMSes like WP or Drupal were shoehorned into projects that were really unfit for them. etc. But also being unable to upgrade underlying PHP versions due to breaking changes, or just p*ss-poor, bug-ridden PEAR packages. As well as the language design prohibiting proper TDD, isolation, etc.
I explicitly said that PHP was but one of the causes. But the language-design and the community certainly did play a significant role. I explicitly never said that you cannot achieve properly designed and maintainable software with PHP. I know you can, because I've also encountered many of those.