Cue legions of PHP drones blubbing about how it does the job just fine, it's available everywhere and how it's used by Facebook and half the internet. We get it. We used to be PHP developers too. We took the time to learn other languages and now work with them. We enjoy our jobs significantly more than we used to. You might too.
I use PHP because I love it. I wouldn't consider myself a "drone", I'd like to think I form views on the basis of my own investigation and relatively impartial evidence.
And it's not that I haven't spent the time learning other languages and working with them. I did a degree in Computer Science and have worked for 12 years in the industry, over which time I have learned and worked with Pascal, C++, Ruby, Lisp, Javascript and dealt with a number of other languages. I discovered PHP early on, but only relatively recently have I really taken a shine to it, particularly with the releases over the past few years, and now I won't work with anything else.
I enjoy my job significantly more than I used to because of PHP.
In the main I don't find it a horrible language, I'm aware of its weaknesses and its "problems" (usually not problems per-se, but things it does differently from other comparable languages). But in the main it fits the way I think and work, and I'm incredibly productive (and I like to think that I don't write code that's too shabby either!).
I'm a full time PHP dev. My work is in PHP, my personal projects is in PHP, I even have a PHP framework (like everyone!) that I maintain.
Yet I thought this post was right on target. I'm busy cleaning and finishing up my PHP projects, and then I won't start another project in PHP. It will be ruby or python, or maybe I'll go functional. It depends on what I want to do. Yes, I can say everything that you so sarcastically proposed, but I also see the value in getting new coders to not start off with PHP.
Good for you! In my case I moved to ruby but I would imagine the transition is similar to other languages at a similar level of abstraction. I went through a long phase where I was trying to bring patterns from ruby into PHP.
It got to the point where whenever I sat down to write PHP, I would write it in ruby first as a sort of pseudo-code, then expand the brackets out into PHP after the fact.
Eventually I decided that I would be more efficient just skipping the expanding out step.
That's nice, if you get lucky and/or you are young and able and willing to move anywhere you want. I have a CS degree, am reasonably proficient in Python, want to be better with Java, but ever since an internship in college have worked, at least professionally, exclusively with PHP.
You (General you) get companies to hire experienced PHP Devs , even as entry level for other languages and I'll be there in seconds. However, all the jobs I see require 3+ years with that language.
For me personally, I'm not able to move around much but I do live in London where there is a pretty active tech scene. Here's how I did it:
* Let x be the technology you want to work with professionally.
* Spend roughly a year of occasional unfocused off-time building little side projects with x. You can do it faster if you have more drive than me.
* Put those side projects on your github profile or anywhere people can see them.
* Apply to companies that work with x, whether or not they say they are hiring, or take experienced hires from other technologies. Send your github profile along with the application. Preferably go via a connection, but this is not required.
* In the interview/application process, demonstrate strong, language-agnostic technical skills along with some fundamental knowledge/realisations specific to technology x.
