What it boils down to, is that systems programming is no longer a necessity for certain kind of start-ups. The applications most people were writing in Turbo C++ were, in some cases, simpler than CRUD screens in PHP. If anything, PHP is today's Basic: the language that kids start with.
There's still however systems programming going on, but in the area of client-server communications (RPC/serialization frameworks), distributed computing, storage systems. There's also great deal of algorithm development going on in the areas of machine learning and information retrieval. Just these challenges don't always occur in early-stage companies.
On the other hand, people are also doing a lot more than the early 90s/late 80s hackers couldn't on personal PCs: domain specific languages, functional programming.
I meant in the sense of not promoting structured programming and being many people's first (and only) exposure to programming.
Python very much promotes a certain style of programming (object oriented, with some functional elements). I.e. I can write Basic in PHP (especially after the decision to add goto) but not in Python (which is a benefit; also important to me is the fact I can't write Perl in Python).
Most every managed web hosting provider has PHP integration enabled in their product. If a kid is building a website for their boy scout troop which needs an email feedback or guest book form, they will use PHP.
What's also fascinating is relational databases are a part of the "make a simple web application" stack as well. So you have people with very little exposure to computing using very complex environments with very strong abstraction layers. There's many many years of hard-core hacking that enabled that to happen.
There's still however systems programming going on, but in the area of client-server communications (RPC/serialization frameworks), distributed computing, storage systems. There's also great deal of algorithm development going on in the areas of machine learning and information retrieval. Just these challenges don't always occur in early-stage companies.
On the other hand, people are also doing a lot more than the early 90s/late 80s hackers couldn't on personal PCs: domain specific languages, functional programming.