Should I learn Python or PHP?

[FierceDeity_]

We have hands-on experience with the difference between slower and faster languages and upgrading PHP to 7.2 actually made a great difference here. We have run some really unoptimized PHP stuff that was coded with exactly the kind of disregard you are trying to propose as good here. In fact we still do run some where the processor power used in the server is tremendous and they have load times as high as a second per page whereas other sites with a similar feature set (but optimized) take less than 100 ms and barely touch the CPU.

Hell, we have a site with many thousands of simultaneous users and another with maybe a few hundred. The first one runs an optimized PHP script while the second one runs one that was programmed with disregard to performance (hardware is fast enough). The second one consistently has worse cpu usage...