I'm a developer. I use tools to get things done. PHP is one of many tools in my arsenal. For certain projects, it's awesome. For others, it's very much not awesome.
That's the beginning and the end of it. I don't get defensive. If I bring up PHP and someone says something like, "Oh, I’m sorry about that" -- that's an indication of that person's immaturity, not any weakness on my part. It's a super condescending thing to say to someone...
If I didn't just give up on them at that point, maybe I'd explain why I chose PHP. If I'm wrong and I'm actually making a bad choice of tools for the given project -- happy to have that conversation and learn a thing or two!