I want to build a large scale web application but I'm torn between the three. The main points I'm looking for are productivity, speed, hosting, community, scalability, learning resources and technology (AJAX, database, threading, MVC etc).

Here are my impressions of them:
PHP: de facto for web development, big community, easy hosting but ugly syntax and poor design.
Ruby: getting more popular, more productive, hosting isn't that bad but scalability is a concern.
Python: fun to use and learn, productive but small community, support and hosting, and not really made for the web.

I have no experience in any of them but I come from client-side programming (JavaScript). Any recommendation?

Obviously PHP as this is a PHP forum! :D

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