I'm primarily a Java/Python programmer, but I just picked up an entry-level job doing web development. I had to learn PHP, and several of my CS friends told me that it would stunt my coding ability/be terrible to program in/murder me in the middle of the night.

So far, there have been annoying moments with the language (one particular thing that bugs me is the syntax for calling functions...), but nothing living up to the statements of my friends. I still haven't learned very much about the language. Is their hate justified? Why or why not?

A few quotes I've seen about PHP:

Haskell is faster than C++, more concise than Perl, more regular than Python, more flexible than Ruby, more typeful than C#, more robust than Java, and has absolutely nothing in common with PHP. Audrey Tang

"PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals." Jon Ribbens. Programmer.