I first learned web programming with php a while back. It has some features that I find very helpful, but the overall language is not something I enjoy, just as a matter of personal preference. I am wondering what alternatives I could use to provide similar functionality using a different underlying programming language (Python? Ruby?).
What I am looking for:

general purpose programming capability
in-line server-side code embedded in HTML (i.e. I want to be able to make my documents pure HTML if desired, rather than demanding special syntax even where I don't want dynamic content)
access to request parameters
ability to send headers, set cookies, etc

Preferably:

does not require a separate server process
easy to connect with Apache

Does anyone have any suggestions?
One thing I tried to do was embedded Ruby (erb) through CGI. This looked like a good fit on paper. Unfortunately, I was not able to get it to work, because I was following a few different guides and the result of combining them did not work out. At any rate, it seems this would not allow me to set arbitrary headers (and more importantly, use sessions and cookies).
Note: I'm not looking for a full web framework at the moment. Just relatively small amounts of dynamic content among otherwise HTML pages.
Thanks!
I'd say given your requirement

Just relatively small amounts of dynamic content among otherwise HTML pages.

then, PHP is going to be hard to beat for getting going quickly and a minimum of learning overhead. It avoids all the CGI issues that you would otherwise have to deal with, and is in fact its own templating language. That's why so many get started with it. Once you get past the point of your goal of mixing a little programming logic into HTML pages, and developing more flexible, maintainable and testable applications, then frameworks such as Rails, Django and others will be worth your time to learn.
Alternatives to php for in-line web programming?