Harry Fuecks - [The sysadmin view on “Why PHP”](http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/01/10/the-sysadmin-view-on-why-php/ "SitePoint Blogs - The sysadmin view on "Why PHP""):

"When was the last time you saw a PHP runtime error take down an entire application or web server? [...] With PHP it’s very hard for a script to take down the runtime environment—the web server—I’d argue that you’d have to be deliberately trying to do so, perhaps filling up disk space or otherwise.

[...] It may now be reasonable to claim that Apache + mod_php has served more HTTP requests for dynamic pages than any other comparable environment. Despite warts and all, this is tested sortware simply by weight of numbers. That translates into a platform which costs little to keep running and less chance of a wakeup call at 2am.

Anyway—ran into an excellent blog recently: FastCGI, SCGI, and Apache: Background and Future discussing the options given new demand for FastCGI with frameworks like Rails, seen from the eyes of a sysadmin. To a great extent it also explains why we’ve ended up with PHP."