It's not even a straight choice though really. With even a little bit of motivation it would not be at all hard to do a freelance project or two on the side of the main job while you get yourself a grounding. The freelance then hopefully grows to the point where you have to quit the boring job because the interesting one is making more money and taking more time. But if it doesn't, nothing lost. But yeah, it does need a bit of wanting to do it in the first place.
I reckon the real reason is that Matt doesn't actually know any PHP. Everyone knows the Beehive code is nicked off Webvelosix.
It's all Perl. And there is no database, it's all text files.
I knew it! Although if it were true I'm sure that the server spec would need to be upped somewhat...
he secretly spends almost everything he earns on the server farm.