PHP needs a vision
I come from a C++ background, and early last year tried my hand at web development.<p>After hearing about all the stuff about how PHP was an "old", kludgey language, I tried to learn python, and go the webpy.  It was doable, but I kept running into issues all the time.<p>I gave up and switched to PHP, and I have to say that it was a much easier experience.  For the most part, everything just worked.  Regardless of how kludgey its history is, how inconsistent the syntax is, etc, it really does work well.  I'm now doing PHP development at my current job and it's been fine.<p>One thing I learned from a previous job was the saying "Your customers don't care about your technology.  They care about you solving their problems."  If you are solving their problems, they will pay you, regardless of whether or not your back-end is CGI, perl, PHP, or whatever.