If you have been around languages used to develop desktop and web software, you know their shortcomings. Before I started using PHP for web development I used Classic ASP. Yes, you can use Classic ASP to connect to a database and display the contents of tables. Can it do much more than that? Not really. Years ago, I found myself maintaining a website that was developed in Classic ASP and I was jealous of PHP web developers but I did not want to start over and redevelop the entire site in PHP. Time passed and I stopped working on that site and I created a new website using PHP. One of the best decisions of my life.

Here are the reasons why you should switch over to PHP:

PHP is open source. That means that a lot of people care about the language and want to see it get better. It also means that the language will grow with technological changes instead of being limited like Clssic ASP was. Classic ASP was forgotten about.

PHP is widely used. Facebook uses PHP. Think about that. The second most trafficked site on the entire Internet. If a Harvard genius went with it, there must be a good reason (or reasons) why he chose to use it. He most likely chose PHP because it's widely supported and it's open source.

Options. Are you a procedural programmer? You can use PHP. Are you an object oriented programmer? You can use PHP. Not all programmers care about great design. Sometimes they just want to put something together as quickly as possible and put it up on the Internet. This is where the option of using procedural programming comes in handy. What if you are working with a team for a site that gets tons of traffic? Then going object oriented would be the better approach so that new developers can acquaint themselves with the classes and methods that are being used by the developers already. Then they can extend the classes and methods to suit their needs.

Functions. Want to do something but don't want to reinvent the wheel? Check out the PHP manual online and there is probably a function for what you are trying to do. Yes, this also means that PHP also has a bunch of functions that you will never use but that is not really a bad thing. As long as your site loads quickly, it is not a problem.