I was considering other factors in that generalization, although they're implicit. E.g., a lot of the "cool" language frameworks I mentioned are comparable with the Java frameworks in speed, but Java has a considerably larger ecosystem and number of hirable developers (although I'm not sure if that translates well into web development). And I assume PHP is as verbose as Java from what I've heard from other people (I've never used PHP).

What language should be the conservative choice based on the many factors and ignoring the specific case for the general case?