The key point of the article seems to be embodied in this quote: So we PHP people are good at failing early, fast and cheap. If you want enterprise grade fail,

The key point of the article seems to be embodied in this quote: So we PHP people are good at failing early, fast and cheap. If you want enterprise grade fail, ask the java guys, if you want scalable fail, ask the c guys. If you want smart fail, ask the clojure guys. But early and cheap, ask us. The claim here is that one can get to a working product using PHP substantially faster than with other languages. However, the article has no data to back this claim up. Indeed, one of the big goals of newer languages like Clojure, Python, and Ruby (the latter two not being explicitly mentioned) is to write code faster and with fewer errors. Java, while verbose, also has strengths: a great many excellent frameworks and libraries. This is also true for web development (e.g. http://www.playframework.org/ http://www.playframework.org/). Including C in the argument is a little strange. As far as I've seen, it's one of the least used languages for deploying web applications these days! In summary, I am wholly unconvinced by the claim of this article. And I say claim as it's missing any substantial argument. Does anyone have any actual data here? There are certainly many case studies for the newer languages and frameworks if you dig a bit. It's an interesting topic.