I am interested in making good choices for my business so I am taking your feedback seriously. -Popularity: I don't think it's wise to choose your platform on

I am interested in making good choices for my business so I am taking your feedback seriously. -Popularity: I don't think it's wise to choose your platform on popularity. The masses make terrible choices all the time. But at the same time I found numbers as high as 80% of the web is running php. (numbers can vary based on metrics, traffic running php vs number of sites) But then python is way less popular than javascript, so if I would accept your argument on popularity shouldn't I use javascript with node.js? -Standards: This is a more appealing argument to be made. But unfortunately I make custom software for running websites, the standard is the output, html,css and js. The backend is irrelevant to my users. This would only affect long term maintenance, of which I am not seeing a jquery moment here. Care to elaborate on why php is going to cause long term maintenance problems or how it's non-standard in some way? -Python can do a better job than php: I did a couple quick performance searches and just in the past couple years php7 has made huge improvements in performance. What this says to me is that php7 is being improved consistently. Does python run websites better than php? If so, in what way? I couldn't see a clear answer for this. Also, since my customers never see or touch either python or php, I am not sure how I could judge if python "does a better job" for my customers. -Php is outdated: What is your metric for measuring something is outdated? I am not sure this is possible with a programming language this is actively being improved and used. Is this a popularity argument? -Php is like McDonalds: While I don't eat at McDonalds, I can easily say that R is nasty to code with, yet I am just fine dealing with it's idiosyncrasies because my friend does the majority of the coding with it, and I help with cleanup and integration. And python simply is not better enough (or at all) than R in every respect for math processing. (this is from testing results from my friend who does math/data analysis/statistics) It may be equivalent in some ways, but certainly not better. -Php is messy: The "bunch of dollar signs, semi colons..." argument would fit with javascript as well (especially when mixed with libraries), so your arguments are conflicting some. Would my customers be better served if my codebase had a more simple syntax? I am not sure this is even possible. But I am willing to hear arguments on this.