(System = programming language, framework, etc.)
PHP has some serious benefits, which are ignored by other programming languages and their frameworks.
One of them is easy deployment. It feels dirty to just put a file into a directory, which matches the URL. But it's incredible easy and straightforward. No matter what you think of the language itself.
On Apache you have mod_php and FastCGI. On all other web servers you can use FastCGI and it behaves just like plain old mod_php. File in Directory and keep going.
No restarts if you change something in the code. Just reload the page.
I used many languages, including the 4 big scripters Perl, Ruby, PHP, Python. Whenever I have the choice, I use Python.
But this choice was easy. What to do if I want to use Python for web development?
- Apache + mod_python
- WSGI
- CGI
- FastCGI
- Python webserver
- Python webserver behind Proxy
- SCGI
- just give up
Similar with any other language.
Is there anything available at the moment or in development, that could be a future PHP killer? Something with the benefits of easy deployment, but with a better language?