And some other questions are also there in our brains.
Now as far as the PHP is concerned, it has become a most widely used language for quick website creation. It's in current trend and there is a big number of PHP developers and communities all around the world at present date.
Many genius people oppose PHP but I would still recommend PHP and advocate for it.
I would start with the fact that today around 82% of the websites are using PHP. Share of Python is just 0.2%. It is nowhere around PHP. But still people will advocate for it. (Sorry I can't help them.)
Please all the Anti-PHP people have a look at the stats below. You will come to know what you are losing. If 82% websites are working on PHP and you don't work on it then you are losing the opportunity to get hired for those 82% websites in the world. This directly eliminates you from the list.
http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all
Now let's discuss how many websites are there in the world right now -
Visit this-
http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/
The count is more than 1,06,66,73,287 at the time I am writing this. Till the time you will read my post it will have increased a lot. Now let us make a rough estimate for 82% websites out of it. It's 87,46,72,095. So all the so called "Anti-PHP" persons are not likely to be hired to work for those 87,46,72,095 out of 1,06,66,73,287 websites. This means a lot. Many many congratulations to them.
What you have to say about these websites which are using PHP? Don't you want to work for these -
Now let's have a look on these points-
1)Cross-platform (runs on many platforms like-LINUX, Windows, Macintosh, UNIX etc)
2)Open source (anyone can contribute)
3)Compatible with almost all servers being used today e.g.- IIS, Apache etc
4)PHP supports a big pool of databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC etc.)
5)Free (can be downloaded freely from official PHP resource: http://www.php.net )
6)Easy to learn and start work immediately.
7)Most widely used (Currently installed on hundreds of millions of domains in the world )
8)Numerous forums, tutorials are available for PHP and PHP based frameworks' help. Where one can ask his/her doubts or answer other's doubt.
9)Can be integrated with PHP frameworks (e.g.- CodeIgniter, Zend, Symphony etc) which then can be used to enforce faster web development, maintainability, security, performance etc.
10)Supports a wide variety of plugins, libraries and helpers.
11)Provides good security features in the form of inbuilt functions for protection against hacker attacks (e.g.- SQL injection, XSS etc ) and if used along with any PHP based framework then it's even better secured with less efforts.
12)After learning just a few simple functions in PHP, one becomes able to do a lot of things with his website. And once you know the basics, there is a wealth of scripts available on the internet that you only need to tweak a little to fit your needs.
13)Has a big list of CMS based on it like- Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal etc
14)World's most used CMS (Wordpress) is also based on PHP. In fact most of the top CMS are based on PHP like- Joomla, Drupal, ExpressionEngine etc.
http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/10/top-10-content-management-systems/
And there are numerous good things that I can tell anyone about PHP. Meet me in person.
At last I would say that it is analogous to having you dinner at a 5 star hotel or on roadside or any other local restaurant. We all know that the food served at 5 star hotel is more hygienic and better but if we count the number of people using a 5 star rated hotel and the people preferring other medium for the same and if we differentiate them then of course we will find that the latter is bigger. So it would be better to target the latter people than the former.
I was working on something important but I could not resist myself to write this because I am a PHP Developer and I am proud to be that.
Also it depends on your discretion what you choose to work upon. If your heart is saying something then go for it crossing all the obstacles you have.
It has been a lot of time I have given to write this post so I am going to stop here.
Hope after reading my this post many people will fall in love with PHP. Even if anyone is on the opposite side then I can't do anything than saying -
Best of luck!