While statistical analysis always has its flaws, the trends are pretty clear. Java, C#, even PHP are losing popularity, Python, Ruby, Haskell, Ada are gaining popularity, and even Google Trends seems to agree.
Python is an interpreted language, like PHP, Ruby, and Perl. While PHP was very popular throughout the 2000s. Recently PHP and Python have become equally as popular. Now they are neck in neck. Both of them have enough features to be capable of anything. Some subtle differences however, make Python more amazing than PHP.
The Competition
PHP is one of the main competitors to Python's dominance, but mostly in the web development arena. PHP is very integrated with web development and can be used for it right out of the box like ASP. How does Python compete with that? Well Python has many web frameworks whose features so outperform PHP that it would be crazy to take on huge custom projects with PHP instead of Python and a framework like Django or Plone.
For example, Django's features allow for model generation using OO design philosophy and immediate database table generation based on your Python code.
I myself, am a Drupal PHP developer. Drupal is by far my favorite web framework. The modular-hook design and constant major updates (without backwards compatibility) were at first very attractive, but now I've become dissatisfied with it after being involved in a major custom-designed Drupal project. I find it superior to Wordpress in every way, but it's hard to customize it without some work.
Read more: Inferno development
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