Is it really that hard to create maintainable PHP code? I've been guilty of making spaghetti code myself, but after a little studying and re-learning the stuff I learned in college, I improved measurably in a matter of weeks.
It isn't so hard to write maintainable PHP code; although maybe the nature of this application was different. If they had written the rationale, I wouldn't have any of these questions :(
While I agree with you on your premise I'm sitting next to a guy on the cubicle to my left writing a mediumish CMS for a client in the usual PHP sort of way. Although his code is nicely indented and formatted for reading. He's having a hella of a time navigating his code base(which is like what? 3000 LOC) when the client requests for simple changes.
It isn't so hard to write maintainable PHP code; although maybe the nature of this application was different. If they had written the rationale, I wouldn't have any of these questions :(