PHP and JavaScript, however, have unjustifiable quirks with some of their most basic functionality. We're talking about stuff as basic as their comparison operators being quite broken, for example. That's where the problem is. Furthermore, the fact that these issues have been around for well over a decade or more without being properly addressed just makes the situation even worse.
Compared to other mainstream languages like C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Ruby and even Perl, both PHP and JavaScript are quite inferior in many critical ways. Perhaps things will improve over time, but we really haven't seen that happen so far.
So let's not pretend that they're "good" just to be politically correct or to try to avoid offending anyone. PHP and JavaScript aren't good languages, and they won't really improve until their communities admit that there are some very serious issues, and then commit to getting them resolved properly and rapidly.