Theo Schlossnagle’s “Six Reasons PHP Sucks” slides from OSCON have been making their way around the Internet.. without hearing any audio it’s hard to give a good understanding of his tone, but #5 was specifically about PEAR… 
PEAR
Allows PHP to exposé what are perhaps the worst most dysfunctional and retarded code… in an easily downloadable/installable form.
What I find funny is that you could easily substitute Microsoft&Windows MSI/CPAN/any other easy install platform in there.
The code is what you make of it of course. Open source and sharing is what it’s all about… you wouldn’t re-invent the wheel when you have one that just needs air, would you?
Funny stuff.
