Are you talking about the dev workflow? My point was that I already have a cheap webhosting, with a domain and email and I can now just login into cpanel and

Are you talking about the dev workflow? My point was that I already have a cheap webhosting, with a domain and email and I can now just login into cpanel and paste a script. As a developer as other mentioned there are ways to run stuff from CLI, so IMO PHP is pretty equal with python or ruby , not sure there is a general clear winer so it always depends on the project and the team. But if you are a new dev and you don't know any of the languages I would say start with Python, even if I prefer the C syntax. I got into PHP indirectly, I worked on desktop applications and I was asked to help with a web project so I learned it by doing (but I was already experienced so I did know what are some good practices), in the end desktop applications are no longer popular so I am still working on SPAs