Most of these arguments can be made about ColdFusion (http://www.getrailo.org/ or http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family.html). It has problems of its own, but a wildly inconsistent language / API isn't on of them. If I were recommending a language to a budding web developer I would not recommend PHP.
For a novice - absolutely. There are very few languages that make it that easy to develop a web application. Developers that already have experience in another server-side language probably won't get as much value. The exception is PHP developers - you guys really need to try ColdFusion.