Professional PHP

Chris Shiflett posted some thoughts on PHP and Ruby on Rails which has generated some interesting discussion. Chris divides programming languages into two categories:

Flexible and powerful: PHP, C, C++, and Perl.

Structured and organized: Java, Ruby, and ASP.NET.

I don't disagree with the cultural grouping. PHP's cultural heritage is definitely in the Unix programming, C/Perl [...]

Loud thinking declares that Java has lost its aura of invincibility. Jason Hunter sums it up nicely:
Ruby on Rails today looks poised to eat Java's mindshare on the web tier. If not Rails, then something else.
It does seem like Java's mindshare is on the decline, along with sun's fortunes. There is some evidence that [...]