What I'm saying is that if you're not a programmer and need to get things done PHP is a great fit because it's so easy to just do it.
I looked at python because it's supposed to be relatively easy to set up. But you need to understand compiling, importing classes, etc. just to get a simple HTML page up and running. With PHP you install apache, create a file and you've made something.
This quip from the article explains it well, and is exactly how I started using PHP:
People come to PHP because they have some problem and they need to solve it. This is what PHP really shines at. You can simply take your static HTML website, add a simple <?php include 'counter.php'; ?> in there, and … be done!
From there you start writing simple scripts, learn how to process forms, how to talk to the database, etc. After some time you start using object oriented programming and maybe make use of some framework.
That’s actually pretty much how I got into programming.
With most other languages it is the other way around. With them you first study computer science for five years and then you go out into the world to find some problem you can solve. (You could say that PHP is a programmer-producing language, whereas most other languages are programmer-consuming.)
Ok, I may have to agree with you there. There is definitely a measure of 'getting something working' that you may not get anywhere else.
Although I disagree with the last paragraph there. If you think PHP is ok, then maybe perl would suit as well. I know there are a few perl frameworks, but not sure if they are as quick as PHP.
