The reason Wikipedia - or, rather, MediaWiki - uses PHP is because Magnus Manske was going to write something to replace UseMod, and thought he'd try this "PHP"

The reason Wikipedia - or, rather, MediaWiki - uses PHP is because Magnus Manske was going to write something to replace UseMod, and thought he'd try this "PHP" thing he'd heard of. It was his first PHP project. (And why didn't Wikipedia have a visual editor until 2013, rather than 2005? Because wikitext syntax was literally defined as "whatever this series of PHP regexps does". Of small acorns, mighty oaks of technical debt can grow ...) Anyone who claims anything even vaguely in the direction of "PHP is good 'cos Wikipedia uses it" is talking rubbish.