It became popular because accessible (for both 'developers' and hosting company). It's a case of "worst is better". The alternative around 2000 was either Perl

It became popular because accessible (for both 'developers' and hosting company). It's a case of "worst is better". The alternative around 2000 was either Perl CGI or ASP classic or Java. Java was too complex for most beginners because it forced OOP, and there was not a lot of resources on OOP back then, unless one already knew Delphi or C++. The irony is that professional PHP development can now be deemed more complex than Java, as the language is trying to fix itself with pragmas and what not for type guards and co... Strangely, there is no real alternative to the whole "drop a script on a server", aside from using basic CGI or FCGI which many classic hosting companies do not provide. > I can't think of a single reason to use PHP over most other available options Many online news or organization web sites are still running Wordpress, Drupal or a heavily modified version of it. But like everything they tend to disappear as it becomes costly to maintain, compared to SAAS solutions which are rapidly replacing all that code.