Of course, there is no “better” language, each language has its own strengths and weaknesses. When starting a new project, you need to chose the right tool for the job.
For me, the right tool is still PHP.
If I was starting a web development business tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t be writing my codebase in Python or Ruby (although they are nice languages), I would chose PHP for the following reasons:
- Everyone knows PHP
PHP experts are never hard to find, which means a greater selection of job candidates. - There are more PHP resources available
There are many PHP commmunity websites, tutorials, frameworks, classes and articles. - PHP is well supported
Most linux web hosts supports PHP4, and more are starting to support PHP5.
When you’re betting your business on a language, you don’t want to take any risks. At the moment I see PHP as still the safest choice.