Is php worth it?

[eluser]2think[/eluser]
Ryan,
Not sure if this is a post just to drum up some issues on here but I'll try to answer as someone who has moved from C & Java to PHP, Ruby & Python (in that order, more or less).

I think Ruby on Rails is very powerful, awesome really. I've found though that there are some issues that require a bit of working through compared to something like Codeigniter(PHP). For one, there are sometimes hosting difficulties in shared environments or even with dedicated environments. Not a deal breaker with Phusion Passenger out now but it is still another element on the stack to support/configure. It could just be I'm limited.

As for PHP, well it is supported across a range of hosts and particularly with Codeigniter, there is a lot less automatically generated code. I was/am wowed by Rails ability to do things, especially when it comes to things like migrations (database changes) but the ability to fully understand my code when working with Codeigniter is a big plus.

For my needs and experience, I love Rails but see Codeigniter as a great solution with PHP.