amen. nobody chooses to use php on new projects but at least it's easy, fast, and pays the bills.

Really? I choose it every time I have a choice.

Especially with a Rails-like framework like CakePHP, I find that my programing time is lessened dramatically because of the framework, and my processing time is much lower than Rails because most of the servers I work on are optimized out the wazoo for PHP instead of Ruby.

But your mileage may vary.