Why avoid CGI for Python with LAMP hosting?

I have been using PHP for years. Lately I've come across numerous forum posts stating that PHP is outdated , that modern programming languages are easier, more secure, etc. etc.

An alternative to Android"s webview

Does anyone knows an alternative to Android's webview component ? For some reasons, it's functionality's are insufficient for me : I need to be able to catch every single request to some url, when i'm browsing a wml page (wap). Anyway, I need to be able to do stuff that Android's webview is not made for. I thought "hey, let's play with the source code, I'm pretty sure that webviews are using apache.org librairies to access internet". Oh boy was I mistaken. Webviews use native code, and that's where I'm stuck.

Alternative to mysql_real_escape_string without connecting to DB

I'd like to have a function behaving as mysql_real_escape_string without connecting to database as at times I need to do dry testing without DB connection. mysql_escape_string is deprecated and therefore is undesirable. Some of my findings:

What is the state of non-Objective-C programming for iPhone?

After spending three weeks learning Objective-C and Cocoa programming for my work, I've been tasked with researching alternatives to it for iPhone development.