To put it less shortly, I will have to write my own article.

But I always wanted to do one.

"Solving the web problem" means nothing unless we can define what the problem is. If the problem is to quickly push out a dynamic page, then PHP is good, at least as good as ASP or JSP in their PHP-ish mode.

Its adoption rate also shows it's a good solution to the "push dynamic pages out" problem, but there are at least two angles to this problem: the point of view of the programmer and the point of view of the server manager. I suspect the adoption rate has a lot to do with the availability of "US$ 2.99 hosting" options, most of which offer PHP. So, it can be popular both because it's a really good option, because it's dirt cheap or a combination of both.

You emphasize the rapid results thing, which is good - if the larval programmer doesn't get some feedback, he or she won't stay interested long enough to learn. But there are other ways of giving feedback - a GUI, for instance. Or printing to the console. No web is required here except for the reason PHP is web-centric.

And then, there are the structural problems with PHP. No namespaces, too much magic in type conversions and so on. Believe-me: I have seen a generation of programmers lost because they were poisoned by Clipper and then by VB. They never really recovered. Maybe ther never will.