> Early PHP was not intended to be a new programming language, and grew organically, with Lerdorf noting in retrospect: "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way." [0]
This might be an unpopular opinion but I think PHP gained mindshare in the early days because Coldfusion (CFML) was neither free nor open source.