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PHP Becoming More Popular
IO ERROR pastes "'PHP has earned the title "Programming Language of the Year 2004" with a positive delta of more than 3 percent within 1 year. The launch of PHP version 5 is generally regarded as a further step to maturity. It is expected that PHP will be capable to maintain its top 4 position for a long time,' according to the TIOBE Programming Community Index. 'The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors.'"
According to the data on my SkillMarket site, php (on the languages page) is holding steady. The data tracked is a bit different, however (Job listings vs search engines hits).
Software Wars
...that PHP is becoming more popular. It is fast, can be developed quickly, uses familiar C style syntax, and was designed from the ground up to be a web language (unlike Perl et al). For about 90% of web applications, PHP is perfect.
What is surprising to me is that PHP has a rating of 9.5%, while Perl has a rating of 7.4% (declining).
Because while Perl has been in widespread use professionally for a log long time ("Perl is dieing, Netcraft confirms it..."), and so there are a large number of IT professionals that use Perl, PHP has only recently been taken seriously by enterprise class developers, and so has not yet built the volume of qualified professionals yet. It's that simple, no mysteries, no misinterpretations, nothing to see, move along.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck