PHP is no doubt the language of choice for server side scripting today. I think most programmers today are familiar with the C-style syntax (who isn't???), so the learning curve will be super small when learning PHP. I basically got familiar with PHP in a few hours. The syntax is almost the same as C and now all any C-familiar programmer has to do is open up the PHP manual and learn some of the built-in functions and he's set! :)