What I actually said was PHP 5 was "fine". To that I'll add the wildly controversial assertions that PHP 7 is "pretty good" and PHP 8 "looks nice".
I know that I'm supposed to have internalized that PHP Is Bad, but occasionally I have to do maintenance on a PHP project and I just can't find it within me to hate it.
> It was easier to deploy on $10 shared hosting than Perl/CGI and more capable than SSI.
Exactly. And for other folks who (unlike us) didn't use PHP at the time, the "Virtues of PHP" section of this Slack post that lists other notable reasons why people chose (and still might?) PHP: https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously/
I know that I'm supposed to have internalized that PHP Is Bad, but occasionally I have to do maintenance on a PHP project and I just can't find it within me to hate it.
> It was easier to deploy on $10 shared hosting than Perl/CGI and more capable than SSI.
Exactly. And for other folks who (unlike us) didn't use PHP at the time, the "Virtues of PHP" section of this Slack post that lists other notable reasons why people chose (and still might?) PHP: https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously/