Web Programming Proffession [ Need Advice] -
A PHP programmer will average around ~$95,000/year, roughly the same for Python or Ruby or C# or C++ or so on. An entry-level junior programmer will make less. An experienced senior developer will make more.
I agree with most of what you said apart from this. An Rails developer is going to get around 50% more than a PHP developer at least here in London and also in SF. Also an entry level Rails developer will have no trouble earning more than a veteran PHP developer.
The only PHP developers that are earning the truly massive bucks are the so called "full stack" developers and whilst many claim to be one of these, the HR departments of many Google, Yahoo and Amazons will tell you that they are as rare as rockinghorse shit.
This is all by the by of course the OPs original question was can he make decent money as a freelance web developer and the truth is yes. Just learn a framework such as Rails or Django or an equivalant in PHP(Cake?) or whateve language and framework you prefer and write some web apps. At the end of the day most clients won't care or even understand what a language or a framework actually is.
Although I'm getting heavily downvoted, I still stand by my opinion that Python or Ruby is a better first language for people looking to get into web development. PHP has it's merits, however I've found that it teaches bad practices and can impair new web developers ability to learn other languages / frameworks.
@superman3275
A lot of the comments you made statements against for the status of different language can be backed up within an article on this very site. http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/general-programming/what-language-do-i-use-r3318
As a programmer in C++, C#, Ruby, Java, JS, PHP, Pearl, and a half dozen others. Every language has its pros and cons. However, your comments came off as just bias towards your preferred language. I am very good in programing in Java, but I do not like doing. Additionally, PHP is not the worst language to learn because it is one of the easiest to link database (SQL) and webpages.
As for the amount of money you earn being less with PHP compared to other languages I would expand your search. Hospitals and medical billing companies are hiring programs with experience in PHP and Java for 80-105k salaries.
@superman3275
A lot of the comments you made statements against for the status of different language can be backed up within an article on this very site. http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/general-programming/what-language-do-i-use-r3318
As a programer in C++, C#, Ruby, Java, JS, PHP, Pearl, and a half dozen others every language has its pros and cons. However, your comments came off as just bias towards your preferred language. I am very good in programing in Java, but I do not like doing. Additionally, PHP is not the worst language to learn because it is one of the easiest to link database (SQL) and webpages.
As for the amount of money you earn being less with PHP compared to other languages I would expand your search. Hospitals and medical billing companies are hiring programs with experience in PHP and Java for 80-105k salaries.
I'm not biased towards my "preferred language." I program in a variety of languages and like different elements of each one. The whole point is that PHP is consistently bad. Go back and read my sources. So far, I've been the only one here to actually back up my claim about PHP being bad with real sources. You guys are just having existential arguments with yourselves ("All languages are bad, thus all languages are the same"). You can link databases and webpages with all languages, and in fact I'd argue Ruby, .NET, and Python are better for interfacing with databases because of their (very powerful) ORM's.
On the whole job thing, that's anecdotal evidence. The **majority** of PHP jobs pay less than jobs in Python or Ruby. I could probably find a niche market where people get paid $500,000 a year for Python programming (if I looked hard enough), but that doesn't mean the majority of Python jobs pay $500,000 a year.
(Also, you spelled programmer wrong.)
@superman3275
Thank you for the down vote.
All of your "sources" are over 2 years old. PHP is not that bad. PHP has had some serious updates since your "source" made their claims.
If PHP was so bad why would Facebook be written in this language?
With PHP having a very large market share and this being in the beginners area would it not be best for people starting out to looking at languages that have massive amounts of documentations?
I think both of you are actually quite on the mark when it comes to PHP. It almost seems like you are debating about the same things.
- PHP regardless of "correctness" has been traditionally the defacto web development language
- Because of this, many web developers have learned it and now there are a lot of PHP developers
- Because there are a lot of PHP developers, the average salary of a PHP developer has decreased due to competition
Python (in particular Django) and Ruby (on rails) and Perl have since become popular again but there is much less competition in this area so the average salary can actually be incredibly high! I have noticed that developers who took the time out from PHP to research and experiment with Ruby and Python (which at the time were "non standard") are also more likely to be "full stack" developers purely because they are typically more curious or experimental than other developers. These are also the same sort of people who took the time out from Windows to research Linux and other "server" operating systems and even alternative web servers, again contributing to their "full stack" credentials.
To the OP, unless you are planning on doing very typical web stuff such as effectively a frontend to a database, you might like to look into C++ and CGI. Not having to find or develop your own bindings for native libraries is very liberating. I also find C++ to be a little better at complex file handling than PHP, Perl and Ruby so C++ shines there too. Not having to load an interpreter can also mean you get some decent speed benefits (though using Apache modules like mod_php is likely to beat any type of CGI).
In the end singular opinions about the market are useless anyway. Getting an overview of the whole market in itself is difficult for a single person and you can't certainly argue about it without hard evidence collected over the years in numbers from reliable sources. And even then it would be like foreseeing the stock market - which is objected to change at any time or not because the delivery of 200.000 tons of oil failed or the next war broke out or someone forgot to flush the toilet / variable and interpreted it differently.
Fact is - the market for PHP is there. PHP exists since almost 20 years and it 's certainly not going to vanish with it being Open-Source and free. The things that more likely tend to vanish over the years again and again are Closed-Source attempts by companies like for example Macromedia (Flash) or Quark (QuarkXPress). And even the former still holds some grasp and kind of finds itself a niché of which it can still continue without being completely extinct.
Open-Source will exist as long as the Source is still out there in any form which anyone can grab and improve or rewrite how they like it or think it should be.
In the end post #2 by @superman3275 basically already said everything that needed to be said.
It 's up to the cdosrunO1 now to get started and decide for himself and this discussion as to how good PHP is or if it 's vanishing or not
is rather working against him just starting and experiencing stuff for himself as it might make him unsure about where to start
instead of just starting and in the end it results wasting way to much time thinking about "if" "could be" or "optimal" solutions.
@csdosrunO1: Just start - go out and find your own way. That 's all I can say. Don't spend your time over-thinking and over-discussing stuff.
Cheers!
Ah, and ... downvotes are ment for trolling posts, spam and the like are they not? If you need to result to downvote regular posts that says something about your own person. 
@superman3275
Thank you for the down vote.
All of your "sources" are over 2 years old. PHP is not that bad. PHP has had some serious updates since your "source" made their claims.
If PHP was so bad why would Facebook be written in this language?
With PHP having a very large market share and this being in the beginners area would it not be best for people starting out to looking at languages that have massive amounts of documentations?
Seriously. Did you not get the point about Anecdotal evidence. Your one facebook example is bad, because even some light googling reveals that Facebook is actively trying to stop using PHP, and they've been creating hacks to work around the languages flaws. All the other languages have lots of documentation also.
OT - taken PHP aside:
As if Facebook is the de facto standard of good coding practices to begin with.
They're always hacking stuff around - heck look at their messed up API and even their iFrame-Widgets change without any warning with little care about the Developers at all - "eat or die" - resulting in borked up and broken stuff over and over again over the years ... no Facebook is certainly not a good example when speaking about good coding practices one should follow.
