As a programmer myself, I would actually prefer starting clean slate with something new (especially for a brand new project), like ruby, nodeJS. Of course, you can stay in your comfort zone with what you know (be it PHP or even .Net MVC C#), but in the long run, the cost of re-writing logic, pain of scale and transition to another platform is truly a buzz kill. I would rather get the code on the right platform first, so that future maintenance is not merely throwing money down in the drain. Not sure about you, but re-writing sounds pretty lame and low efficiency to me.