Try dropping files in an environment where apache / php is not installed, or where db drivers or gd bindings are missing. Or try to set it up with nginx and php5-fpm.

There is a big difference in being ubiquitious and being easy to use, and lets not infer casuality where there is none. Most popular PHP projects come with a good installer, but go to sourceforge and try a lesser known project. Or go back to the 90s and see if installing drupal or wordpress was as easy.

I can argue that shell scripting is the best programming language by this logic.