> I also think the PHP professional development community is smaller than that of other languages when measured as a percentage of the total professionals using the language.
Indeed, this becomes quite apparent when it comes time to hire. The vast majority of candidates that claim competency in PHP generally fall into two camps: 1) "W3C school grads" 2) Wordpress developers. Both sets drastically increase the signal/noise ratio.
PHP is too easy to get started with and is too popular.
You can even use WYSIWYG tools to create a website, and then proceed to insert small, poorly written PHP scripts in it. Try creating a PHP gig and start looking for developers on many freelance sites - you'll get tons of people who don't even know what the hell a function is, and yet their profile claims they're experienced in PHP.
>Wordpress developers
No offense to actual Wordpress developers, but many self proclaimed Wordpress "PHP devs" I've seen are only capable of installing Wordpress with a few plugins and select skins. Maybe they know how to edit a file or two in a plugin, but that's about it. And when you ask them what language do they use, they'll obviously pick PHP, even though they couldn't code their way out of a cardboard box. This drives the average wage down, but hell, even mom & pop shops need a dynamic website these days, and Wordpress giveth.
In fact, the market really wants Wordpress developers these days. I checked out many freelance sites like freelancer.com and upwork, and there are tons of gigs available for Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and shopping cart setups. Hell, I'm currently looking to help out a friend by finding a dev to create a small website in PHP (or any suitable language, don't care), but the local shops only offer Wordpress and Drupal! Won't touch anything else!
Try finding a Python, Ruby, Node or Go shop who will only install scripts/CMSes and customize them. Nope, not yet! But given enough time and popularity, they'll have their fair share or developers who have no clue what the hell they're doing and will drive the average wage down. Just wait.
C/C++ and Java was like that. Since it was a part of most people's college education, everyone and their mom claimed they knew C++ or Java. It was on their resume, even though their knowledge was superficial at best. In my experience, Indian and Pakistani applicants were the worst offenders in this.
Indeed, this becomes quite apparent when it comes time to hire. The vast majority of candidates that claim competency in PHP generally fall into two camps: 1) "W3C school grads" 2) Wordpress developers. Both sets drastically increase the signal/noise ratio.