Sounds like you spent too much time fighting what it was, or just dealt with outdated code built by people who had no business programming in the first place.

Which would also explain your JavaScript distaste.

There's a lot of garbage code, predatory "experts" peddling bullshit, and outdated tutorials people still follow like they were the gospel.

You can't really blame that on the language. It's just the nature of the beast of making much of anything web-facing for more than five years.

But to be fair, I feel about Python, Ruby, and Java the way you do about PHP and JS. Sooner suck the business end of a shotgun than deal with any of those counterintuitive shit-shows.

I think a lot of such reactions though stem from two things. Which language you learned first, and which language you first "felt" productive with. Colours the entire rest of your experience and opinions.

I came down a different path than most, thus I have wildly different impressions, ideas, understandings, and opinions.