[kazinator]

PHP started in 1994 and was released in 1995. It was the alernative to writing C code inside the web server (like CERN's httpd) and recompiling the server, or doing everything via CGI. (Yes, hacking servers was a thing. In 1994 I worked on a project in which I did exactly that. This was before Apache and modules.)

ASP 1.0 was released in 1996. The first Cold Fusion in 1995. JSP not until 1998.

Cold Fusion and PHP appear to be neck-and-neck, almost; it's plausible that if Cold Fusion had been free, it might have taken more mind share away from PHP.

Interpolating results into HTML dynamically isn't an idea that originated with any of this software. Prior art is the shell "here document", also implemented by imitation in Perl and other languages. "Here documents" were used in CGI scripting before PHP. (I'm not saying that the shell's "here document" is the ultimate prior art, either).

At your system prompt:

  $ cat <<!
  <table>
  $(for x in 1 2 3; do echo "  <tr><td>$x</td></tr>" ; done)
  </table>
  !

  <table>
    <tr><td>1</td></tr>
    <tr><td>2</td></tr>
    <tr><td>3</td></tr>
  </table>