It's a fantastic reason. Writing code is a job. A well-run business is dictated by factors that will usually dominate language design.
If these other languages were better in a holistic sense, businesses would switch.
I would argue against the "technically superior" position on three merits:
1. Finance,
2. Median productivity
3. Long-term product stability
Network effects mean that familiar languages will dominate. PHP, C#, and Javascript are familiar.
PHP has had staying power because it is extremely well-documented (with examples) for the novice, prioritizes backwards compatibility, and is reasonably if not very productive for most developers. The documentation section of PHP.net is probably the most important language "feature" of PHP - it trumps almost any language design feature you think is important.
It reads easily. It's easy to implement. It interacts natively with JSON in a completely fluid way. The database handling routines are rock solid and fast. The core language team spends a lot time improving the safety and performance of existing code. There's a good debug story.
It's its own templating language - no need to bolt on a hand-rolled templating mechanism. Just PHP all the way down. It prioritizes language features (reflection) that make writing libraries and frameworks easier. It promotes building reusable tools. Important features are pulled directly into the runtime, based on popularity in the ecosystem. The kitchen sink is included and it's portable.
Basically, it's a language that has been developed by people who actually have to build and maintain projects over a long period of time. A useful language is more than it's design.
So why do I see it going down the hole that Perl and ColdFusion are already occupying?
I see the other side: it's a sinking ship. FB comes to rescue PHP, but internally seems to like anything but PHP for greenfield projects: Java, C++, Erlang (chat msg broker), OCaml/Reason (messenger.com app), even Haskell is used for some spam filtering tool.
If these other languages were better in a holistic sense, businesses would switch.
I would argue against the "technically superior" position on three merits:
1. Finance, 2. Median productivity 3. Long-term product stability
Network effects mean that familiar languages will dominate. PHP, C#, and Javascript are familiar.
PHP has had staying power because it is extremely well-documented (with examples) for the novice, prioritizes backwards compatibility, and is reasonably if not very productive for most developers. The documentation section of PHP.net is probably the most important language "feature" of PHP - it trumps almost any language design feature you think is important.
It reads easily. It's easy to implement. It interacts natively with JSON in a completely fluid way. The database handling routines are rock solid and fast. The core language team spends a lot time improving the safety and performance of existing code. There's a good debug story.
It's its own templating language - no need to bolt on a hand-rolled templating mechanism. Just PHP all the way down. It prioritizes language features (reflection) that make writing libraries and frameworks easier. It promotes building reusable tools. Important features are pulled directly into the runtime, based on popularity in the ecosystem. The kitchen sink is included and it's portable.
Basically, it's a language that has been developed by people who actually have to build and maintain projects over a long period of time. A useful language is more than it's design.