Not a former PHP'er, but I can tell why most of us hate it. It's an ugly bastard of a language created by accumulated hacks and inconsistencies. People love Python and Ruby because they're exactly the opposite, they embody coherent styles that let you build upon what you know in a logical fashion. No language is perfect, but they at least attempt to be consistent. PHP is full of dragons hiding everywhere that just jump out bite you when make the mistake of assuming something should work a certain way. The only style PHP embodies is "whatever works", which is a shitty design philosophy.
Thanks for the candid words, I only have the experience of actionscript2 javascript, and php, so it is hard for me to know if the grass is really greener or if there isnt just the normal battles as seen with all new technologies.
From what you say mind I haven't had this experience, I have found it easy to grasp and lots of examples to get me on my way with nothing left out, always finding that solution to a given problem.
Maybe I should frame the question like this, what would make me enthusiastic to migrate to a RoR or pythan etc. is that they are quicker to develop with, or have lots of prebuilt functions / classes saved you much work. etc. Can you give advantages such as these?
I don't have too much experience with web apps, but I've done a little PHP (and I've used Ruby for non-web stuff). PHP has an amazing amount of resources out there, and it's ubiquitous, which are two large plusses. But its capabilities are rather elementary, and while this can be fine, it often isn't. For instance, PHP doesn't have real closures, and it doesn't have first-class functions. (When C's functions are more first-class than yours, you know you have a problem.) You have to pass their names around in strings. Ruby, on the other hand, is a nicer language to work in--it has the things I mentioned, and even more. And when the language isn't fighting with you, you don't necessarily need as many resources; nevertheless, Ruby has them.
Javascript, though, I feel is a better language. Real first-class functions and closures, innumerable examples and tutorials (though not always good ones), and more. Its problem is that every browser understands it slightly differently.
So between PHP and other things, I feel that the difference is within the language itself, not in the modules and prebuilt things (as all of the mentioned languages have these). But working in PHP felt confining when I was using it, and that's something I took away. (It reminded me of Java in that regard—the same feeling of being confined, as though I couldn't do what I wanted to.)
