Being a Visual Studio/SQL Server developer, I could argue the "solid" commit
See, stuff like that is just irritating.
PHP is a scripting language, it started out as a hack, and no matter how much lipstick you put on it -- it is still a pig, no matter how pretty or useful it may have become. But that's my opinion, as obviously, PHP has a vast following and many large scale solutions have been developed using it.
Visual Studio is a development environment. There is no specific language associated with it. Likewise, .NET is NOT a language, it is a framework. A vast, powerful, language-independent one, at that. It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't some freaky version of PHP for .NET out there somewhere.
The typical core web development is LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) vs. whatever acronym might exist for Windows/IIS/SQL Server/.NET.
Arguing PHP/MySQL against .NET/MSSQL is virtually apples and oranges. PHP/MySQL vs. C#/MSSQL would be a better choice.
C# itself IS superior to PHP, no matter how far it has come.
SQL Server IS superior to MySQL, no matter how far it has come.
All of that said, I should probably not even post this, as I'm just being grumpy and I think we are all in agreement to just use the tool which best fits the job. (Well, as long as it is NOT Perl -- I would rather gouge my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon than ever have to touch that mess of a "language" again.)