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Business

Posted by Salman Akram
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points

PHP or Ruby on Rails on right direction?

Hi guys,

Since I am heavily focus on JavaScript and JQuery to keep progress myself as beginner, however, I want to know which direction should I go to PHP/Laravel/Cogniter/Symfony .... or .... Ruby on Rails/Nodes/Express. What's your recommendation to learn now for next five- ten years benefits for us since Dreamweaver or Flash were no longer used, for example.

Two factors:

  • More than hundred PHP job availables compared to 5-10 Ruby in local areas?
  • Ruby is increasingly demanding than PHP in near future?

Looking forward to your advice and any books/resources?

Good articles below:

http://www.leonardteo.com/2012/07/ruby-on-rails-vs-php-the-good-the-bad/

http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/reasons-why-every-web-designer-needs-to-learn-rails

http://joshuakemp.blogspot.ca/2013/11/how-blacksmith-learned-to-code-and-9.html

Dustin Matlock James Barnett Sean T. Unwin

6 Answers

Dustin Matlock
Dustin Matlock
33,856 Points

Salman, this is a difficult question to answer. However, it was somewhat touched on in this thread.

Christian Andersson
Christian Andersson
8,712 Points
Christian Andersson
Christian Andersson
8,712 Points

Another student asked this very question only a few weeks ago, and I'll tell you what I told him:

-- go with whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Both languages are very flexible and useful. They both have their own pros and cons, and there could be thousands of arguments on why you should pick X instead of Y. So I think that it all comes down to pursuing a language that you more interesting and exciting than the alternative.

And if really want, no one stops you from learning the 2nd alternative once you have mastered the first! ;)

Good luck.

Salman Akram
PLUS
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points
Salman Akram
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points

Thank you Christian for your great reply, I need more opinions and very specific! :)

Salman Akram
PLUS
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points
Salman Akram
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points

Great, thank you Dustin. Tough to know right direction, I feel to find more information and research

Dustin Matlock, I have review your another thread, I am amazed and it does help alot. you rock!

Dustin Matlock
Dustin Matlock
33,856 Points

There's no real definitive answer on what to learn or the future. I feel JavaScript platforms and frameworks will surpass PHP in the future. However, PHP isn't going anywhere for a while.

There's some debate over it's future development, politics, etc., but you might check out Facebook's Hack Language as an alternative to PHP.

Salman Akram
PLUS
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points
Salman Akram
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points

Looks like we have to keep up latest platforms/frameworks, that would be nice to have them and experiment it. Thanks mate.

Also, I didn't have option to click 'best answer', it doesn't show up here.

Dustin Matlock
Dustin Matlock
33,856 Points

I changed the topic to business if you wanted to select a best answer.

Salman Akram
PLUS
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points
Salman Akram
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points

Maciej Czuchnowski , I see you are very knowledge on Ruby and Rails in which I am currently hold due to focus on Front-End Development and portfolio projects myself, could you please see my questions above before starting as freelance soon? Have you working alot on Freelance projects?

Would love to hear your opinions or suggestions.

Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points
Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points

I'm still a student of Treehouse, not working in the field yet (too scared). I chose Rails simply because I love the simplicity of Ruby and because I don't like the way PHP looks ;). I usually choose things according to some rather irrational reasons, for example, I don't want to use MacBooks because I don't like how they look and the apple logo and the fact that the system is not open-source. I don't care if they are better for Rails development or if they have better hardware in general. So listening to my advice in this field (what framework to choose) might not be the best idea.

However, one thing is sure: JavaScript is becoming increasingly popular, so checking out things like AngularJS, NodeJS and ExpressJS will always be a good idea. Treehouse doesn't have courses on these yet, but they are in the future plans. I'm currently learning how to combine Rails and Angular.