TakyonH said:
and seems to fuck up a lot of kinda basic stuff, but I don't know enough about PHP to know what's basic
Nothing about PHP is basic. PHP is easily the most uncooperative programming language out there (not to be confused with hardest to use or learn). In fact, many experienced programmers refuse to even call it a programming language, because it doesn't seem to fit the criteria needed to be met in order to be considered one.
If I remember what I read correctly, PHP is unreliable in that it's not always evident in what it will do when you use the same line of code in different situations. That is, PHP is unpredictable and interferes with itself, which causes strange happenings that shouldn't work the way they do.