[ThomPete]

And since most people in this world use managed hosting for their website projects thats the right thing to compare with.

Also you have MAMP which is as easy as it comes for setting up a PHP/mysql environment on your computer.

But the strength of PHP goes far beyond this simple point.

For developers it's very very simple to get started. The difference between writing a hello world app and a crm app isn't that big. Weaving HTML and PHP together with JavaScript, CSS, JS easy to learn with PHP.

I wouldn't even know where to start in Ruby or Python. Just too many dependencies before you can even get started.

So yes it's by any metrics it matter true.

Take it from someone who had to teach himself how to do it and have tried to get started with several languages.