Once your mind thinks in maps, greps, arrays, lexicals, closures, namespaces and short circuiting operators, PHP is a major pain in the ass.

Actually, most languages become a major pain in the ass at that point. :-)

And it makes me understand quite well what makes LISP hackers so grumpy about many other languages. After all,

We all recall that Perl est un esprit LISP dans un corps C, n'est-ce pas? :-) (“corps C” sounds like “corset” in French.)
—Philippe Verdret

Makeshifts last the longest.