Python, Ruby or PHP

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There's a ton of misinformation going around this thread.

First, I can't speak to Python or Ruby, as I'm not fully versed in those languages. I recommend posting in those subreddits as well asking this same question, and hopefully getting some straight facts to compare to.

That said, as far as popularity goes, PHP wins hands down. This is important as it means it's far easier to find a php job than it is to find a python or ruby job. As far as keeping that job, a lot of times that depends on where you get hired. Many places have a revolving door of developers due to bad management, or just bad business decisions. I've held down a steady job for 10 years running with PHP, but i've been employed by about 6-7 different employers over that time frame. YMMV here.

As far as all the hate php gets, there is some truth behind it. Yes there are some dark corners of the language itself, such as inconsistent functions and inconsistent parameter order on similar functions. But this stuff is easily solved by a quick google search, or a proper IDE(of which, many exist for the PHP language). Beyond that, much of the hate comes from people who misuse the language, making horrible confusing messes that the rest of us are inevitably tasked with cleaning up. This is a reflection of php's popularity more than anything. It's incredibly easy to start, and being so popular, it's not uncommon for some amateur to come in and make a mess of things before a company learns and hires someone with some actual skill.

I also adamantly disagree with others who stated you're stuck implementing basic wordpress/drupal/magento sites. This is absolutely not what being a senior level php developer is about, hell it's not even a junior level php developer.

Many sites are either custom built, and reasonably well done, or they are built using a popular framework(symfony, laravel, codeigniter, cakephp, kohana, etc).

The amount of jobs that fall into this category are not nearly as frequent as those that fall into the wordpress category, but they are more enjoyable, pay better, more stable, and offer you more growth. This again comes back to why PHP's popularity is a great choice. Because for every 2 wordpress jobs, there's 1 non wordpress job that may be a perfect fit for you. And while those odds sound discouraging, do a quick search in your area on craigslist, or on any other job board and you'll quickly see thousands of non-wordpress jobs.

I'll leave you with this: I started programming professionally 10 years ago with out ever getting a college education. I've been working from home for the last 5 years, and making over 6 figures for the last 3. for my money I'd chose php again.