I do PHP a lot, and no serious project uses PHP dirctly to render HTML. Well, I've seen PHP templates, but they are always separate from the actual code. I thi

I do PHP a lot, and no serious project uses PHP dirctly to render HTML. Well, I've seen PHP templates, but they are always separate from the actual code. I think PHP's success is due to several factors: 1) Easy to set up and start. It even has a built in web server now. 2) Lots of useful functions. 3) Lots of useful extensions. 4) Weak datatypes. Newbies don't have to deal with too many error/warning messages. (and yes, i wish PHP had a strict typing mode). 5) The documentation is absolutely amazing (at least for the popular things). 6) The community. Even before StackOverflow, your PHP questions would be answered instantly. Yes, PHP has its problems, and it does allow you to easily mix the PHP, HTML, JS all in on file, but while many people consider that as a path to shitty code, I consider it an easy way to tinker and try things, which is very valuable for beginners.