I'm not surprised to see PHP at the top of the list here. It is almost impossible not to be able to put something useful together fairly early on in the learning process on the LAMP stack. I am somewhat disheartened to see that there are people who actually like Java/C# (and C# is much more closely related to Java than it is to C/C++ until you slip to unmanaged code) -- it is the very strictness, framework-ness and, well, enterprise-ness of languages like those that I find a real turn-off. I'm not a huge lover of Python or Ruby, but I know that if I'm involved in a community or team of Python or Ruby programmers, I'll be working with people who actually enjoy the art and craft of programming. Left to my own devices, I'd probably settle down for a long, comfortable relationship with server-side JavaScript. A language without first-class functions, one that makes it hard for me to develop my own language that lets me be as expressive as I want to be within the domain, makes my life unnecessarily difficult. JS is not the ultimate answer here -- something more like a classic Lisp is more powerful -- but I am used to the syntax, and the natural interoperability between client-side and server-side elements makes it a good fit for web apps.