Re "and probably won't understand code written thus".
Rather than giving up on the masses of "PHP coders" by labeling them incapable of functional style programming, recursion, etc, why not try to show them? If they're capable of wading through the inconsistencies of PHP they're pretty damn capable in my book. Sure they may lack the rigors of a computer science background but that doesn't mean they're uninterested.
Showing a "PHP coder" a different paradigm of programming in a different language is going to be less effective than trying to express it in the language they know. Personally, I'm really enjoying the challenge of taking the beautiful concepts taken for granted in many other programming language circles and teaching/expressing them in a language understood by the "masses".
However as a former PHP programmer I had very good reasons to give up on the community. The biggest one being the sparseness of quality code. As a PHP developer trying to learn how to write good code you find yourself jumping from island to island of good ideas floating in a sea of crap. The community has the lowest signal-to-noise ratio I've ever seen.
Rather than giving up on the masses of "PHP coders" by labeling them incapable of functional style programming, recursion, etc, why not try to show them? If they're capable of wading through the inconsistencies of PHP they're pretty damn capable in my book. Sure they may lack the rigors of a computer science background but that doesn't mean they're uninterested.
Showing a "PHP coder" a different paradigm of programming in a different language is going to be less effective than trying to express it in the language they know. Personally, I'm really enjoying the challenge of taking the beautiful concepts taken for granted in many other programming language circles and teaching/expressing them in a language understood by the "masses".