How about "php enables me to code like a moron", or even better, "php breaks common conventions and forces me to think about every little detail and special edge case, slowing me down if I don't want to accidentally 'code like a moron' "

Nested ternary operators emerge because of the lack of if/switch expressions (which is C fault), so they are "useful" (they shouldn't be). However, PHP is the only language that treats it as left associative. This has 2 problems:

• You are forced to use parenthesis. Some (insane) people might do: (cond1) ? "A" : (cond2) ? "B" : "C" And it makes sense. Its ugly af, but it makes sense. But PHP now forces you to use more parethesis. It's making you work more.
• It breaks convention. If you come from any other language and use ternary operators, you will get unexpected results. After hours of banging your head against the wall, you realize the problem. And now you have to learn a new edge case in the language, and what to do to actually use the language.

"But you shouldn't use ternary operators anyway! Use if/switch/polymorphic dispatch/goto/anything else"

True, but still, the feature is there, and its bad. The fact that there are other alternatives doesn't make the PHP ternary operator worse than other languages' ternary operator.

PHP works against you. That's the problem. The ternary operator is not a good example, since there are alternatives. But look at something so simple, so mundane like strpos.

If strpos doesn't find returns false. Every other language returns -1. And if you then use this value elsewhere, PHP will cast it to 0 for you. Boom, your program is broken, and you have to stare at the screen for hours, looking for the error.

"BuT yOU sHoUlD AlwAyS cHEcK tHe rETurN eRRor!"

And even if that's true, if we all must check the return value, does PHP force you to do so? Like checked exceptions in Java? Or all the Option & Result in Rust? throws, throws, throws... unwrap, unwrap, unwrap... (Many) people hate those features

PHP works against you. And that's why its bad.