PHP vs. application server?
Using application servers like Pylons, Django, etc. require much more work to setup and deploy then PHP applications which are generally supported out of the box. I run a few Django apps and had to learn a bit of configuring apache with mod_python in order to get things to work. I put forth the effort because coding in python is much more enjoyable to me than PHP and after you get the Apache config right once you never really have to mess with it again.
On another note, if you decide to go with a framework like Django, Rails, Pylons, .... they tend to solve a lot of small repetitive tasks that you would otherwise do on your own. But frameworks are their own huge topic of discussion.
For those of you who have had the opportunity of writing web applications in PHP and then as an application server (eg. Python-based solutions like CherryPy or Pylons), in what context are application servers a better alternative to PHP?
I tend to favor PHP simply because it's available on just about any web server (especially shared host), but I'm looking for other good reasons to make an informed choice. Thank you.