Perl with Catalyst looks irresistibly good. So far, I've found development with Python enjoyable but a little slower than PHP (without using a framework, the Python ones are questionably good: Django is awesome but probably the antonym of "lightweight", Pylons seemed a bit clumsy and anti-intuitive).

PHP's too irregular and broken within itself to be a pleasure to use (I guess seeking pleasure in writing code comes after a few years of doing it), though it'd (for now) be my choice when making a website for someone, as it's well supported and well adapted to the web.

Microsoft's .NET (I refer to C#, not Visual Basic, which is too crap to mention) was really usable and fast. I never thought I'd be saying it, but it could be my first choice for making a website for a client if they had a Windows server. Making working pages is just so quick and painless, plus they're compiled on the first load, not interpreted every time, making it the fastest technology for web sites once online (Python compiles your libraries into some kind of bytecode too - as does a JSP server - but this is faster).

Java Server Pages... well what to say... This technology is pretty unconventional, as the special tags you can embed (like <jsp:forward>) behave pretty strangely in my opinion. Just like on .NET, where Windows developers feel at home, maybe to consider JSP "intuitive" you have to be a seasoned Java developer. Either way, though the pages were served fast, and you do have the pleasure of using Java and all it's benefits, as well as making custom taglibs, etc., I'm not sure why I would use JSP. Perhaps as a solution to a specific problem on a huge, corporate website?

ColdFusion... one of the most ignored technologies in the non-corporate development sector (not surprising considering it's price), but used by a limited circle of non-corporate websites. J.K. Rowling's site ses it, MySpace uses it. Though I only know the basics of the markup, and I've never used it, it seemed like something specifically designed for quickly developing web applications that do a lot of database interaction. Again, a big enterprise might want to invest in powering their website with CF, but no one else can really afford it; now that Adobe acquired it via Macromedia, it's not going to get much cheaper. Worth noting is the awesome amount of cool features the application server ships with, which justifies (partly) it's price. I'd really like to know someone who runs this so I can play around with it and use it for my website.

Before this turns into a rant of sorts, I'll just mention Ruby. Without much doubts, I can say that Rails is a formidably powerful framework. Though I don't actually *know* Ruby, I've taken a look at Rails, and it's something I really liked at a glance or two. The problem is, Ruby is not a language I honestly want to use. Maybe in an attempt to make development "like writing a story for your computer", some seriously flawed things have cropped up, in my opinion. The concept of zero being a true value is so unbelievably foreign to me, that I just couldn't start using it. Don't worry, I understand the concept of everything being an object, but it just didn't feel right. Heck, practically everything's an object in Java too, except aspects that decisively have little value as objects, like the in-built types. I have no doubts I'll end up using it anyway for the sake of Rails... but I'm lost as to why people love it so much (when Python exists, for example).

What are your thoughts?

I totally agree. Rem acu tetigisti.