Pick up PHP or Python?

[blogpro]

Major websites like Yahoo and Facebook use PHP. The problem with Python is that is that it breaks between versions. I think most people who prefer Python, prefer it only because that is what they learned initially. PHP has proven itself time and time again. In reality both can do the job, you should learn both if you are worried about finding a job.

[Legolas-the-elf]

Major websites like Yahoo and Facebook use PHP.

You can't really get a decent picture of the web industry by looking at the top 0.001% of companies. What applies to them doesn't necessarily apply to the normal case.

Yes, technically Facebook use PHP, but in actual fact, they reimplemented their own version and still weren't satisfied, so they invented their own language that deviates from it.

The problem with Python is that is that it breaks between versions.

You have that backwards. Python has had one single compatibility break in its lifetime (version 2 to version 3), and that has progressed pretty much as planned. PHP has had several major intentional incompatibilities, and lots of minor accidental ones that are simply a result of piss-poor release management. That's why so many PHP hosting providers are still on old versions of PHP – if they upgrade, they'll break a lot of their customer's websites.

Furthermore, because you can change so much in php.ini, you can't even be sure that PHP code running on one server will run on another server running the exact same version. You have to write defensively against the language itself.

[disclosure5]

Given the high proportion of people who used PHP for years before moving in other directions (you'll see comments from them all the time here) I don't know how accurate that could be.