[risotto]

Full stack web servers like Mongrel or CherryPy.

Server fabrication and automation tools like Chef, Puppet, Fabric.

Process management tools like God.

Parallel worker systems like Resque or Celery.

PHP is great for web apps, but the further I've gone into systems programming, the more I need Python/Perl/Ruby (or C).

[eropple]

You are not answering the question that was asked. ianl's post was directly in reference to web application development, not systems programming. Of course you wouldn't do that with PHP. That's like saying "yeah, it's a great knife, but it can't change my oil." Well...sure. Nobody's saying it can. But it does what we're actually talking about just fine, and I am skeptical of ianl's claims that there are missing pieces of the infrastructure for web development.

(BTW: Puppet not playing nicely with PHP is new to me as I use it regularly. And I don't think you get much with Mongrel that nginx/FPM don't do well enough.)

[mnutt]

How about evented frameworks like Tornado (python) or Goliath (ruby)?

[eropple]

That's actually a good point, and I'm a big fan of Tornado and Manos (C#) myself.