Programming language for simple dynamic web site development?
<p>I only know the basics of HTML/CSS. The only experience with web development I have is whatever I learned in Web Development 101 at my university, aka "OMG - CSS u guise, 101". </p>

<p>I'm mainly interested in building simple dynamic sites. That's the whole reason I got into this in the first place. I'm at the point now where I realize that it's not enough to only know HTML and CSS.</p>

<p>I realize that I'm going to have to go through a learning curve no matter what programming language I choose to learn, so I figure I should learn something that will be most the beneficial in the long run. I'm all about putting in the sweat equity now to build a better future. PHP seems like the easy and obvious first choice, but I keep reading over and over and over again how people have switched from PHP to Python and never been happier. Or how you should skip PHP altogether and just learn Python or Perl.</p>

<p>But I don't understand why that is!</p>

<p>I keep looping back to thinking "F___ it, I just need to learn PHP so I can be a WordPress ninja." But then I do some more reading, and I walk away feeling like PHP is more of a 'temporary fix' language, and that the REAL languages are Python/Perl/Ruby. But I'm very split because I really don't need to do anything complicated. I just need to build basic 50-page web sites with some database interactivity.</p>

<p>Do you have any advice? What would you learn if you were in my spot??</p>
