PHP vs Ruby on rails vs Perl

[maxiscool]

Just a little article about Ruby, not RoR: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/12.html
Take a look at what David Heinemeier Hansson, the author of RoR, had to say.

From my side you clearly want a framework so there are two things I would recommend you for sure. Try all of the frameworks that appeal you (check things like pre-production environment setup, production environment setup, deployment cycle...) and make a little survey, see whether or not you have the possibilities (hosting and customers) for developing in that framework, because you seem a pragmatic person.

And don't forget, you may probably not leverage the framework enough if you don't know the language enough as well as some paradigms of programming. Pay attention to communities (I don't think there is a problem right here with whether RoR, PHP or Django), libraries and tools that could make your life easier, like editors.

P.S: Just for fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1NVfDlU6yQ

Thank you for the article! It has gotten me thinking. I'll need to brood over it for a while.

With RoR, I'll be able to do anything I could do with PHP, right? The project I have in my head now is a video-sharing site for programmers, for screen-casts and such. Could I do this using purely ruby, msql, xhtml and css?

[kyberfabrikken]

Now for the loaded question: which language is more future proof?

Don't bother with that. All of those languages will outlast you, so the question should rather be which language would excite you most today. It seems that RoR fits well with you, so go ahead and give it a try.

But, wouldn't you say that RoR is applicable in a professional world? It is being used by many developers today, who don't think it's necessarily 'less credible' or not as good of a language/framework.

It sure is. But a professional shouldn't use an abstraction without at least having a cursory knowledge of the details, that gets abstracted away. Joel Spolsky has written an excellent article, called The Law of Leaky Abstractions.

So if I learn RoR now, it won't screw me over for the rest of my life? I won't need to un-learn anything?

I don't believe there is any such thing as bad knowledge. Even if you learn terrible practices, you can use it as experience later on. It's only if you stop learning, that you get into trouble. And that aside, I think both Rails and Ruby are fine examples of best practice in many respects. Ruby is generally accepted as much more correct and consistent, than PHP. And Rails is a very well designed framework.

[maxiscool]

I feel a lot more comfortable now with learning rails. Now, back to a recurring question: learning resources. I prefer to learn from books (that is why I've drifted towards Sitepoint.). What books would recommend for learning RoR? I am aware of two, one from Sitepoint and one from Pragprog.com. Which would you recommend?

[kyberfabrikken]

The Ruby resources sticky thread would be a good starting point.

[maxiscool]

Do you think this book: http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/ag...-third-edition, could guide me from the beginning?