I've been coding PHP as a hobby for 1.5 years on-and-off. I've done some client work and some small personal sites with LAMP.

For the past 2 months I've been coding a lot, and trying to pick a PHP framework (just coding pure PHP before now). Went through Zend, Symfony, Kohana, CodeIgniter Reactor, found none to be suitable, then settled on Yii (great framework).

However, as I'm not currently invested in any PHP frameworks, or even in the PHP language too much, I decided to see if I should try something else. (This is for a high-potential project)

After researching, I'm now leaning towards Python. Partly because of the ubiquitous Django, partly because of those who already use it (not that I'm doing it to be 'cool', but so many companies and HNers can't be wrong), and partly because it couldn't hurt to have another language either way.

I know the whole "use what you know" motto, but as I'm still at square one (haven't starting coding the project) and not in need of income for a few years (first year college student) I'd like to do it right from the start.

PHP was great for learning everything from variables and loops to OOP, Design Patterns, etc. so I'd like to think picking up a new language won't be a huge task. I'm doing C# in college and find it no problem due to my PHP experience.

I'm a few chapters into Dive Into Python (http://diveintopython.org/) and it seems even easier than PHP so far.

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated before I go all-out.

TL;DR: 1st year college student, coding (hobby) PHP on-and-off for 1.5 years, about to start a big (potential startup) project and going to switch to Python/Django. Feedback?

Thanks for reading :)