PHP is a good starter language, it teaches you about programming languages and whatnot. Java is a good professional language to wrap your head around.

If you are sticking with web programming, PHP will rarely get you into a big company. Languages such as ASP.net or JSP are where it is at for positions like that. The websites I work on at my job get millions of hits a day (around 9 get over 10 million a day, and a couple dozen more get several hundred thousand a day), all without so much as a hiccup.

When a company is dealing with millions of users, PHP simply can not compete with a compiled langauge. There are a few of them out there, of course (I believe facebook runs on PHP)

Remember, life as a programmer will lead you through many languages. Don't really worry about learning a particular language, worry about understanding how programming works and similarities between languages. Any good programmer can pick up a new language pretty quickly, and most houses will let you ease into the job a bit, to give you time to learn the langauge. Once you learn a few major languages, it will get easier and easier.

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Jason Corradino
Applications Developer, Interactive Support - Tribune Technology
J2EE Development, Script Tinkering - Develop, Support, and Maintain Tribune websites.