I am reading into MySQL and PHP for building websites. I am basically running through the basics of building a site using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I have already looked at ASP.NET and SQL prior to this bout of "learning".
https://www.codecademy.com/courses/websites-r-fun/0/1

Anyway I got board (happens too much) and went looking on line for the best language to build a web site in, and got struck by just how much people stick to the same few versions. I seriously though there would be more about Ruby and some others in something like Ubuntu server, but basically everyone is doing the same basic two.
Which is a little boring.

So my question* is - without resorting to name calling;
Which do _actual_ programmers / build your own website / blog people prefer?
If you have used more then one set of languages why, but if not why did you choose what you do use?



*Marked as a question as if someone can actually give me a persuasive reason too choose one over the other they will get marked as my "answer"

No such thing as a best language. They were designed to do similar things with some specializing in one area more than another. And it's a waste of time talking to people who prefer one over another and spend their time convincing you of the merits of theirs. They're all equally boring, equally tedious, equally effective.

I'll have to comment that it depends on where you plan on hosting your site at. If you host your own server then you can choose any version you want; However if you are using a free or other site to host it, they will specify a version of PHP/Apache, etc and it will probably be a newer version. Newer versions can (and will) break site code. I remember coding a game and most of that code doesn't work anymore with the newer PHP (i think i did with 4.5? while currently it's 5+)

I'd say develop and use whatever site you're going to be hosting with. Beyond that...

I agree with MaximumBunny, there really is no such thing as a "best" language and discussing that is a waste of time.

You have to find out what's best for you, by looking at what you want to accomplish and gaining some experience with the languages you're interested in.

True, but there's plenty of language that will do a decent job depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Perl as i recall was a popular one until JSP and PHP were available.

Actually you could code a program that just does text output to be a webserver too if you feed/redirect the input/output.

Reminds me... The DFourms is powered by a D program, and it's insanely fast.

Reddit is mostly written in Python.

The source code can be found at https://github.com/reddit/reddit

(Note that this is a large codebase, so don't go in expecting something small and simple.)