I think you may have failed to realize (as a lot of people have) that the language has evolved both in structure and in practice since you probably dropped it. Most of what people hate about PHP can be dealt with using a proper framework, autoloading and PDO (no more inline SQL queries ever), and most of the rest can be maneuvered around as with the gotchas of any language. Check out the Laravel community and look at Composer and take a look at what it's become if you're serious and it will become apparent that, while PHP still has its warts, it is entirely possible and practicable to use it and enjoy it, or at least not hate it.
I don't know how much exposure has to count for "experience" since i'm still a student but i've written code in perl, python, c++, java and php and so far I find things to like and things I can't stand about each of them.
I don't know how much exposure has to count for "experience" since i'm still a student but i've written code in perl, python, c++, java and php and so far I find things to like and things I can't stand about each of them.