ruby on rails vs php for beginners?

What is a better route to go for someone that knows neither? Done lots of Google-ing on the subject and it seems that most people who start PHP end up RoR a few years down the line...your thoughts?

Would also like to add that this is to create web based tools and general web development shit. Thanks!

php baby

Never tried learning ruby but php might be the most useful. Especially for IM.

I would go with php because:

* it's far more widely used than ruby which means there is a lot more documentation on the net and there is also a lot more software already written in php which you can use / cannibalize.
* php is totally ubiquitous and installed on every host everywhere.
* php has its flaws but it's used robustly on some of the highest traffic sites on the net (Facebook, all the big porn tubes sites etc).
* ruby documentation is pretty scattered and thin from what I can tell.

If you want to lean a more fully featured scripting language than php I would go with python, which is also a nice clean language, well documented, and it has a great standard library out of the box.

If you want to learn PHP, I would highly, highly recommend this course:


It's very straight to the point and teaches you everything you need to know to get started making useful scripts. It's how I first learned!

I'm at the same spot, decided to get in depth with PHP,

For me the breaker was that most of my web projects are in wordpress, based on PHP

For me, I'm horrible at learning something if there's no practical application. Having something I can use it for (plugins / wordpress hacks / themes) right now and a whole lot of practical applications and problems that I already need fixed / improved at this moment in time means I'll be more likely to be successful at learning it.

For web based tools, for what I do there's enough stuff like zennoposter that I can use until my skill gets better later on.

just my 2 cents

What ever you learn try out thenewboston.com

i LOVE ruby, but php is more used so good to know too... and amen on thenewboston.com Bucky has some awesome tutes. He's a programming genius, and easy to follow and understand!