Using PHP hits back at you after a few years when you find out all its libraries are slowly rotting, revealing fundamental security flaws that will give you unimaginable headaches. These days I select my languages purely by programmer competence.
So true. PHP library implementers seem to love making everything a strange corner case instead of taking a step back and picking a better abstraction. It is amazing how easy it is to write code that works for all possible inputs when you pick the right abstraction, and it's amazing how downright difficult it is when you pick the wrong one. PHP libraries function accordingly.
