[gregjor]

For me it's always been the language that gets the job done. If you are a hobbyist programmer you can pick whatever feels fun or interesting, but if someone is paying you to code they usually don't care about programming languages. In most real work you won't get to choose the language anyway, because the decision has been made already or you are working with a big base of production code.

I enjoy getting things to work and making clients happy. The programming language doesn't really enter into it, though some tool sets can be more frustrating than others. I charge more if I have to work with something I know in advance will be tedious or painful.

As for saying PHP is "one of the poorest languages to have in the toolkit," that's only true for bragging to other programmers. PHP is what the majority of web sites are written with. If you want to make money programming you'll find that the uncool languages and tools such as PHP and MySQL (like Visual Basic and Access before them) are the richest vein of paying work.

Keep your eye on new things but don't forget that professional programmers -- those who get paid for programming -- shouldn't hobble themselves by insisting on only using their favorite language or tools.

[gregjor]

And then to answer your actual question: for me C has been the most enjoyable, but that is largely a function of my age and career experience. One of the most fun applications I've written in my 30+ years was in Fortran IV.