To answer your question, the only thing users care about is what your site does and if it does it well. The only people who care are the other people who are developing websites as well.
Basically I see the PHP backlash coming out of many painful personal experiences that hit the limitations/drawbacks of PHP. I've maintained a large social networking site written by someone else and I can tell you it was a stinking pile of spaghetti.
I think the power comes from using a framework like RoR of Django that abstracts aways common parts of web development. Plus I see it as a way to keep from reinventing the wheel which leads to simpler code. And we all love simple code.
Good point, adamdoupe. I've created a large project in straight PHP and it was a mess. Now I work with CakePHP, a framework similar to Rails, and it's 100... no, 1000... times cleaner and more scalable!
PHP lowers the barriers to entry for web programming, which is a good thing. It also means that a lot of really shitty code gets written. At my last job, we had one file that was 10,000 lines long. Basically, I never want to touch PHP again after that job.
Basically I see the PHP backlash coming out of many painful personal experiences that hit the limitations/drawbacks of PHP. I've maintained a large social networking site written by someone else and I can tell you it was a stinking pile of spaghetti.
I think the power comes from using a framework like RoR of Django that abstracts aways common parts of web development. Plus I see it as a way to keep from reinventing the wheel which leads to simpler code. And we all love simple code.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.