PHP requires no setup is a myth. How many windows users can run php out of the box? None. You have to have a webserver + something like mod_php setup to get it

PHP requires no setup is a myth. How many windows users can run php out of the box? None. You have to have a webserver + something like mod_php setup to get it running. How many novice programmers know how to configure a vhost with mod_php? It happens many hosting providers have this which is convenient but heroku and others have improved ease of deploy for other languages. But for local learning, PHP is no more convenient than any modern dynamic language (python, ruby, or even node.js).