As Matthew Weir O'Phinney points out, David Hansson (of Rails fame) has posted a few comments on what he calls the "immediacy of PHP".

I love the fact that it's all just self-contained. That the language includes so many helpful functions in the box. [...] PHP scales down like no other package for the web and it deserves more credit for tackling that scope.

and to that, Matthew comments:

It's nice to see leaders of projects like Rails having this same attitude. It's a breath of fresh air in the competitive market of web development frameworks.