Using PHP for ANYTHING is a recipe for a disaster. (Yes, even using it for the thing it was originally meant for - a simple tool for beginners to make dynamic web content. Ever seen a beginner write PHP code without gaping security holes all around?) Even Perl is much more sane language. Perl at least has consistent block scope.

For web development, I'm strangely drawn toward Node.js at the moment. But anything goes if it does not have to be PHP.