I don't think the historical evidence supports this. PHP was invented as a templating DSL for C programmers. I'd propose:
PHP (version 0): C is not an HTML templating language; Perl and Python are too heavyweight as embedded templating languages, given that all of our logic is in C anyway.
PHP (version N): PHP works fine, except it's missing function F.
...and so on, ad infinitum.
PHP doesn't really fit the paradigm of the original essay. It's hard to even pretend that PHP was deliberately designed as a reaction to other existing languages. Rather, PHP evolved. Hence, explanations of PHP tend to be circular: "PHP exists because PHP's design, documentation, and community were tightly focused on web publishing", or "PHP exists because it's backwards-compatible with PHP".
PHP (version 0): C is not an HTML templating language; Perl and Python are too heavyweight as embedded templating languages, given that all of our logic is in C anyway.
PHP (version N): PHP works fine, except it's missing function F.
...and so on, ad infinitum.
PHP doesn't really fit the paradigm of the original essay. It's hard to even pretend that PHP was deliberately designed as a reaction to other existing languages. Rather, PHP evolved. Hence, explanations of PHP tend to be circular: "PHP exists because PHP's design, documentation, and community were tightly focused on web publishing", or "PHP exists because it's backwards-compatible with PHP".