I know HN ist not place to prais php... PHP ist easy to learn and it easy to code in php, but if your a professional software developer you can also write professional software for php.

You can develop faster, because of large amount of built-in functions and classes. The "shared nothing" philosophy makes it almost unbeatable in terms of performance. Thats why a majority of large sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo and Flickr is powered by PHP.

Well php is not as structured as ruby or python. Sometimes it is not structured at all. :-(

Other HN users would certainly talk about disadvantages of PHPafter my comment. ;-)