I already knew it, since I helped write this site in php, but Jeff Atwood just confirms it php sucks. But these days you can also write nice OO things in php, sometimes a little clunky but still very good. In some other post I will let you see the dal I wrote for our master page, it uses a dao layer like you would write in java or .net, it even uses interfaces.
And I for one am very impressed with the speed of php, after all it is an interpreted language.
But I hate the the way it deals with variables. Making a typo usually kills productivity since you have to look for the needle in the haystack.