Well, the reasons I started learning PHP were: 1. It was the most popular web language when I started (in 2000), the alternative being ASP... 2. It's extremel

Well, the reasons I started learning PHP were: 1. It was the most popular web language when I started (in 2000), the alternative being ASP... 2. It's extremely easy to use and set up. Most starting programmers/developpers work on Windows. If you want to start developping on Ruby or Pythons you have two possibilities: - Install linux, which (whatever you may think) is not easy for any newbie. - Try to work out the Windows ports of your programming language of choice. In the case of ruby, you have to find windows installs for ruby, gems, bundler, rake, rails (or whatever app you want to use), git, probably cygwin, your webserver of choice, etc... Most of these elements are not made for the Windows ecosystem and the ports are usually pretty poorly documented. If you use PHP, you just have to: 1. Install XAMPP. 2. Click on "launch server" 3. go to http://localhost/ http://localhost/ This is why PHP is still popular.