[justuk]

PHP is perfect for newbies. It's flexible. Has lots of functions built in. Several mature frameworks available. It's in active development. Hugely popular so lots of people to ask. Easy to set up a dev environment. No need to learn server admin as almost all hosting services supports it. I could go on and on.

[Udo]

As someone who did a lot (and still does some) server-side development in PHP, I disagree about the newbies part, I think it's deceptive.

Doing PHP right is challenging, and for bigger apps it requires more insight into the internals of the server and the client than, say, a comparable application written for Ruby on Rails. PHP certainly gives you enough rope to hang yourself, and while I personally do enjoy the length of rope it gives me, it's also very clear that newbies have no chance of making the right decisions given this tool.

[sillygeese]

It's certainly convenient for getting started, but I think he wants to say that the drawbacks of choosing PHP outweigh the benefits.

I started out with Java, moved on to Python, and now I'm using Clojure. Every language & ecosystem -combination is some sort of trade-off, but one could reasonably make the case that Clojure is the best trade-off currently available.

Whatever he does, he should not get stuck using PHP because there are much better tools available.

[noir_lord]

I don't think you are going to change his mind, he seems very set on it.