Which language is best for web programming ?

It all depends on the project. PHP is suitable in every kind of projects and ASP.NET MVC as well. It all depends on the resources available and the platform which clients opts for cost effectiveness and ease of maintenance.

ASP.NET MVC is Microsoft product and we get to have support from Microsoft with rich features. On the other hand, PHP has a whole lot of community support with features that we are in need of as well. Both of them serves its purpose.

PHP has different framework support such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Laravel etc. Each framework has its own learning curve and serves it purpose.

We have third party framework for ASP.NET products such as Telerik, DevExpress which also serves rich experience in web application development.

The choice of making which is suitable for the project depends on your analysis on the client requirement and the client's choice on platform and future ease of maintenance and support. Hope this answers.

Curiously, no mention of node.js...

As others have said, PHP is the most ubiquitous language. It used to be horrendous, but has since then fixed a lot of it's quirks. The ecosystem of plugins third party tools is rich and the community friendly.

ASP.Net is a relatively popular language too, but as others have mentioned, it runs on microsoft servers only (less available, generally more expensive, considered by many as less professional than linux/unix servers). Actually ASP.Net is runnable on Linux servers, if I remember correctly, but the process is involved and ultimately not worth it.

Node.js is the little rising tech that everyone babbles about. It shines for real-time data, but can be used for more classic stuff just as well. It is very fast, and allows programmers to use the same language (javascript) on the server and client, which is a benediction for most, a curse for some. Its usage as well as its idiosyncrasies differs greatly from the PHP/ASP tropes, so knowledge of the above languages does not translate directly to good javascript application design.

Other popular tools include Ruby, Perl, Python, all of which are veterans and have also huge large communities backing them.

There is no best language, but an attempt at an answer would be, if you're a student:

- Want to be highly hirable, use the most common web tool, but face huge competition? Use PHP

- Want to be highly hirable, use tools designed to work in large organizations, but have to pay for everything? use ASP

- Want to be cutting edge, use the latest techs, do real-time chat and that sort of stuff, but be less employable, unless by start-ups? Use Node.js

- Want to use tools for which the expertise ratio is high (that is, most people using the tool are experts, and there is little cruft, bad tutorials, and bad knowledge in the community), the results fast, but demand for experts low? Use Python/Perl/Ruby

If you're looking to hire to build something:

- Want to do a blog/regular website/community? PHP

- Making something special, needing quick iterating and prototyping, or real-time needs? Node.js

- Want to make sure you're hiring qualified people? Perl

Let me provide you with my answer,

PHP is an open source language, they build many frameworks to make it suit with any business requirement. Asp.net is more control in term of the product and the libraries they built it to make it easy as possible. And the nodeJS amazing language with the highest performance. So this is in term of the web development, of course there is others, but these are the familiar ones right now. In the other hand, of the coding will come the desktop applications, actually we can cut the road and say that the C language is the best, but not as a beginner cause it needs a good understanding of the programing concepts. C# could help in this case easy, fast, and not a good performance. Java you may say that it's not that big difference between these two. Then it comes the C++ with more libraries from the C. Also, as the web we can't say this is all of the languages, but it's the familiar ones. 

This answer includes just the web and desktop applications, there is many other languages. Such as the games, shell, and so on. 

Depends upon type of  project.For large scale project ASP.NET with Entity framework (3-tire architecture)is better.For medium scale project PHP ,etc.

I think ASP.NET is better than the other programming and frame work languages

ruby on rails  , express , nodejs , django python , laravel php , yii php . Actually asp.net is a bad approach the technogly run only on microsoft servers and bearly used  by tech guru giants like facebook twitter google uber .. 

I will say ASP.NET MVC because it gives u separation of concern and easy testing and debugging your application.

I think PHP is best for web development. :-) :-)

ASP.NET MVC is better then PHP

ASP.NET using MVC and PHP is best for WEB Programming

 ASP.NET and entity frame work more better than others