Web-based games

What is the best programming language for making web-based multi-player games?

At the moment I'd go with Python. It's mainstream, the community is large, there are plenty of actively-developed libraries, it supports unicode, and it's moderately fast.

Alternatives: Perl (arcane), Tcl (small community), PHP (bring your own lube), Ruby (slow). PHP and Ruby aren't all that hot with Unicode either, although that probably isn't a problem for a web game.

The only problem with Python is self.it's __something__ """ugly""" with FORCED INDENTATION OF CODE.

For the front end, your only choices are Javascript or Flash, so screw a pooch.