This is partly off-topic, but I think it is interesting to rewind the clock to the year 2000 and remember the reasons why people, at that time, found PHP so int

This is partly off-topic, but I think it is interesting to rewind the clock to the year 2000 and remember the reasons why people, at that time, found PHP so interesting. I recall I was drawn to PHP at that time because it made it so easy to make a change to the code and see the change instantly. Not much else offered that, at that time (other than Perl). The world of the JVM seemed burdensome: you had to recompile to see a change. Only Perl and PHP allowed almost live editing of your code, and instant refresh. It is interesting to think about how much tools have advanced, and especially tools in the JVM world. Some of the advantages that Perl and PHP seemed to have in 2000 are advantages that no longer exist. One can argue that PHP is easier to learn than any language in the JVM ecosystem, but still, I think it is important to think about how much things have changed. The JVM eco-system has largely caught up to script languages in offering ease of editing/ease of seeing one's changes.