My judgement call is that the battle is over. I may be wrong, but I am on the right side of wrong. If I turn out to be wrong in the future, I'll look back and still think I made the right call given the data I had.
It has been a while since I decided to learn python and django. At the time I thought they would take over. Well, I was wrong. They have not - PHP has continued to grow faster than they have.
So this time my call is that PHP is the thing to stick to, particularly when I see moves like this one facebook has. In any case, this choice I made is the safe one. I can't lose by making this decision.
I don't know anything about that graph, but I'd be happy to cede the point that there are many more installations of PHP than Ruby/Python on the web as long as you'll cede the point that this fact doesn't relegate them to "tiny niche languages." If you don't agree, let me know and I'll argue that point.
Obviously what you choose to use for development is your decision. That said, I am confused as to why it's so important to you that you use the most popular language. After a certain threshold of popularity, it doesn't seem that it should matter. PHP, Python, and Ruby all have the critical mass of developers and library support needed to render language popularity concerns irrelevant.
Okay, I'll cede that point. Python (don't know much about ruby) has the support you need to write your own web apps. But try to find people who you can pay to continue your work - very difficult and very expensive. That's my main reason.
My judgement call is that the battle is over. I may be wrong, but I am on the right side of wrong. If I turn out to be wrong in the future, I'll look back and still think I made the right call given the data I had.
It has been a while since I decided to learn python and django. At the time I thought they would take over. Well, I was wrong. They have not - PHP has continued to grow faster than they have.
So this time my call is that PHP is the thing to stick to, particularly when I see moves like this one facebook has. In any case, this choice I made is the safe one. I can't lose by making this decision.