Well I'll assume by 'user' friendly, you mean 'developer' friendly.
PHP is ridiculously easy to get started with. I believe it was the first 'real' language and ecosystem that I really knew well [enough]. There's a huge body of knowledge associated with it that you can find on the web or in the bookstore.
PHP is ridiculously easy to grok because it's in the C family when it comes to syntax. PHP essentially enforces no control over the style you must employ while using it and doesn't even suggest a style to use. I made some awesome stuff in PHP but the code behind it was terrible.
Contrast this all with Lisp (which I'm still learning). I've never tried to do web dev with Common Lisp or anything, but getting started with Compojure was comparatively much harder than it was with PHP.
Lisp is conceptually more complex than PHP. You have to think at a higher level. It becomes easier but I definitely could not have grasped it at 12 or 13. Lisp isn't purely functional but afaik (from what I've seen), but it encourages a functional style. It's not as easy to grok as PHP and so I would imagine this creates a barrier for most 'code monkeys'. Why learn to use a new tool when the one you got ain't broken?
PHP is ridiculously easy to get started with. I believe it was the first 'real' language and ecosystem that I really knew well [enough]. There's a huge body of knowledge associated with it that you can find on the web or in the bookstore.
PHP is ridiculously easy to grok because it's in the C family when it comes to syntax. PHP essentially enforces no control over the style you must employ while using it and doesn't even suggest a style to use. I made some awesome stuff in PHP but the code behind it was terrible.
Contrast this all with Lisp (which I'm still learning). I've never tried to do web dev with Common Lisp or anything, but getting started with Compojure was comparatively much harder than it was with PHP. Lisp is conceptually more complex than PHP. You have to think at a higher level. It becomes easier but I definitely could not have grasped it at 12 or 13. Lisp isn't purely functional but afaik (from what I've seen), but it encourages a functional style. It's not as easy to grok as PHP and so I would imagine this creates a barrier for most 'code monkeys'. Why learn to use a new tool when the one you got ain't broken?