>The best way to combat something as pervasively and institutionally awful as PHP is not to point out all its (many, many, many) faults, but to build compelling alternatives and make sure these alternatives are equally pervasive, as easy to set up and use as possible.
This is clearly not the case. The alternatives are already compelling. They are equal to or better than PHP in every single respect. Yet they are not as widespread. The idea that pointing out the flaws of PHP doesn't help is absolutely incorrect. Demonstrating the flaws of PHP, and the practical impact that has on producing useful software has been very successful for me in convincing PHP users to try something sane. I find only a very small minority of PHP programmers are actually unwilling to try anything else, most of them will give something else a shot if you simply demonstrate why it is in their best interests. Some people certainly get upset when you point out that they are using a bad tool due to ignorance of better tools, but most are able to get over themselves and realize the better tool will make their life easier.
The overall effect of convincing individuals to use better languages is that those alternatives do become as pervasive as PHP. How does someone say "I want the alternatives to be as pervasive as PHP" right after saying "stop trying to make the alternatives as pervasive as PHP" without realizing how ridiculous that is?
This is clearly not the case. The alternatives are already compelling. They are equal to or better than PHP in every single respect. Yet they are not as widespread. The idea that pointing out the flaws of PHP doesn't help is absolutely incorrect. Demonstrating the flaws of PHP, and the practical impact that has on producing useful software has been very successful for me in convincing PHP users to try something sane. I find only a very small minority of PHP programmers are actually unwilling to try anything else, most of them will give something else a shot if you simply demonstrate why it is in their best interests. Some people certainly get upset when you point out that they are using a bad tool due to ignorance of better tools, but most are able to get over themselves and realize the better tool will make their life easier.
The overall effect of convincing individuals to use better languages is that those alternatives do become as pervasive as PHP. How does someone say "I want the alternatives to be as pervasive as PHP" right after saying "stop trying to make the alternatives as pervasive as PHP" without realizing how ridiculous that is?