The problem with PHP is that its "cross platform" support is shoddy at best... on IIS. Maybe it works great on other platforms, but I have had numerous IIS problems including: lack of documentation, incorrect documentation, incomplete support.

To say that web apps are "built from scratch" in C and COBOL is insane. Really, that's what we would do if we went ASP or ASP.NET? We'd write COBOL? We'd write C? That's just ridiculous and makes me wonder what this guy is talking about.

PHP's strength is it is "cross-platform". It's weakness is that, on the web, you choose your server. So cross-platformability is mostly moot. You choose the tool that gets you there in the best fashion. I liked phpBB, so I wrestled with php to make it run on IIS. I extend phpBB with ASP.NET. It's the web so who cares if one page is ASPX and another is PHP.

I find it hard to say it's a language _you should know_. Besides, any decent programmer picks it up in an afternoon. And curses it the next morning for not having the basic type safety we come to expect in C#. Option Explicit... please?