Somehow this turned into a thread of people debating the merits and faults of PHP. There's a place for that, to be sure, but that's not really the point. The p

Somehow this turned into a thread of people debating the merits and faults of PHP. There's a place for that, to be sure, but that's not really the point. The point is that getting started is the most important thing, and moving forward is the next most important thing. I'm not saying if someone comes to you and says, "I want to build a web app" one should say, "Do it in PHP." But if someone says, "I'm building my first web app in PHP" the most damaging thing you could say is, "lol you're coding like a noob. You should be doing that in {language x}." I see happening all the time. Coding in PHP is better than not coding because you're terrified of not doing things "the right way," and that often is the alternative. Let him or her finish a project in PHP before you try to turn the ship around and make him or her learn Rails. Or JavaScript or Python, or Java or whatever. Just start.