[devwebee]

The problem with PHP is its design, or lack of it to be precise. It's inconsistent and quite verbose. But it's made for the web, so it's very easy to deploy, and the workflow is straightforward, put file in a folder on a server and refresh the page. If you're new to web development but already have some programming experience, PHP is a good language to learn because it's ubiquitous and very easy to get started. If you're new to programming, I'd suggest you learn Python first; it's a beautifully designed general purpose language, and will guide you through the right path before diving into the PHP jungle.

[frade33]

Yes I am very much interested in learning Ruby/RoR and Python too. I had a brief look over the both of them, and my first impression was their syntax is very simple and easy to learn too, compared to the objective C, which literally gave me a heart attack ;)

Perhaps, I have not developed a lengthy web application myself yet, therefore I can not determine the inefficiencies of PHP over RoR or Python. And this was the reason I posted it here, to see, How PHP can be troublesome in complex web applications and how RoR or Python handle them more efficiently.

[devwebee]

PHP can handle as well or better than Python and Ruby. The performance difference is not that important when choosing between these languages, because they are all slow anyway. If you compare PHP vs Java or Ruby vs NodeJS, then performance gain might be an important factor when choosing. Python is used more outside of webdev than PHP and Ruby, so that might be something to consider, because there are more libraries for making UIs, games, graphics, etc.