Ok, I've got a newbish question that Google is turning up tons of different answers too....hopefully I can get some interactive input.
I've been working in Microsoft shops doing web development for going on 10 years now. I'm very familiar with SQL Server and classic ASP, and that is what my company's software-as-a-service application is written in. I've worked with .NET, too, and we were in the process of porting our web app to ASP.NET when our company merged with another, and that project has been halted indefinitely.
I've used and played with PHP/MySQL a little on my own, mostly it's just been with my personal webhost, editing premade software with tweaks and whatnot. Things like Wordpress, image galleries, etc., just going in and editing minor things here or there in the various PHP/MySQL scripts you can set up.
I've wondered before if I would be able to replicate our ASP/SQL Server app in PHP/MySQL. But now I'm wondering...what is the rough "standard" open source enterprise-level web development environment these days? I figure MySQL works for the back end, but does PHP work well for sites, even advanced ones? I know the jump from classic ASP to ASP.NET was phenomenal, but in my mind PHP is closer to classic ASP. Does PHP have ways to do some of the things like how ASP.NET handles things? What about some of the other environments I hear about - Python, Ruby, etc.? What about Java? My experience with Java hasn't been that great, but I see the Netbeans stuff looks pretty sharp - and you can probably develop on both the desktop and web and share libraries and stuff with that, right?
I guess I'm ultimately wondering where I might focus to pick up some new skills. Thanks for any input!