> Don't Python/Perl/Ruby also run on all servers? Perl and Python also tend to be installed by default on most Linux distros No. And there's not much else to say about it. > You don't need to know what objects are to write Hello World in Python/Perl/Ruby, or to store something in a database. You just need a code example, and then you can start writing PHP in Python/Perl/Ruby :-) Deployment in PHP *tends* to be much simpler than the other systems. Go look at deploying a RoR app, for example. That isn't to say there aren't exceptions, but in general the above is true enough that it matters. > [ Well, non-programmers should be just that: non-programmers. That's the problem with both Excel and PHP: they turn non-programmers into semi-programmers which output massive amounts of awful code ] That makes people millions of dollars a year. You're forgetting that the people paying you don't care about anything except the result. And the results speak for themselves.

Magento is not a good example of PHP. I've had to deal with Magento, and I describe it as being written by Java developers who decided to use PHP for the ubiquity of deployment.

I think Anthony Ferrara hit the nail on the head. The PHP community is practical above all else. What RoR does by developing an entire stack of functionality, PHP does with a few bash scripts, and then gets back to solving problems. PHP sucks, C++ sucks, Javascript sucks, Java sucks, see a pattern? I think the blog post entitled 'The Silent Majority of Experts' describes this blog post very well (http://prog21.dadgum.com/143.html).