This has always been my argument. A hell of a lot of very popular sites (eg tube sites and of course all the many very popular WP blogs) are written in php. It

This has always been my argument. A hell of a lot of very popular sites (eg tube sites and of course all the many very popular WP blogs) are written in php. It gets the job done just as easily as other languages. Just not as elegant. I run my own network of sites, and almost all webmasters I also work with all know the ins and outs of php. Its just quicker and more efficient to code in php. But on here and a few other sites php gets a lot of flak. If i'm ever asked how to get started in programming I'd always recommend php (or maybe JS) because it is very simple and there are so many resources for it.