HTML is not a scripting/programming language as it does not support conditionals/looping. This is a criteria of all scripting languages.
HTML is what's called a markup language.
But anyway... PHP all the way!!!
A family friend of mine is a web designer and he loves ASP.NET, but any .NET technology is crap because you gotta pay Microsoft to use it
EDIT: Damn you diablo, you got in and said exactly what I said while I was typing this!
Or maybe before I posted this I didn't read the thread properly...