firstly, its a bit obvious GOOGLE trafic for ‘php’ is enormous compared to ruby

* php has been around for much more
* php is the default web language, anyone wanting to have a take on php, doing one search for every single thing they’re trying to do
* rails was launched in 2004, with a considerable maturity on 2.3.5
* rails users are more savvy, we know where our content is

now let’s try some relevancy, instead of google, jobtrends
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ruby+on+rails%2C+php&l=
the grap is WAY smaller, also, notice PHP doesnt have a consistent grow, and notice the big fall in jan 11….beautiful!

better yet, look at ‘relative’ http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ruby+on+rails%2C+php&l=&relative=1

just look at it! lol!!! really, look at it, I don’t even need to say anything else, you should delete this post, man

For me writing code must be fun, and PHP (or languages like Java or C++) are just so painful compared to Python, Ruby and Objective C. With the latter, you get stuff done quickly, you can write tests more easily, and you can write elegant and robust code.

This is killerPHP after all!

Ruby has many strong points as does PHP .. I’ve spoken and written about the pro’s and con’s of each language on this site.

Stefan

I think symfony is a pretty solid piece of work, but its baroque character and heavy design must be turning away droves of PHPers into the arms of Code Igniter and CakePHP. Code Igniter has its place, but it won’t be building enterprise applications at IBM. There is nothing in this world that demonstrates better the appeal of Rails than coding the same app in CakePHP. There are other frameworks that are probably much better than these, but this lot are the ones with the “I’m just as good as Rails” buzz.

The naivete in the comments to this article is no credit to PHP. These people obviously aren’t responsible for teams of developers, issues of scalability, or bearing the cost of maintaining legacy PHP code. We are flooded with the resumes of these self-taught lone wolves for whom PHP probably is an appropriate solution.

Although we are a predominantly PHP shop, I am baffled by the seriousness being (apparently) given to PHP in larger organizations. There are precious few strong programmers among the droves of PHP riff-raff. I know because I read their resumes just about every day. I don’t know where these supposed large PHP-based organizations are finding their talent. It can’t be former Java programmers with degrees in Comp Sci.

I have no doubt that companies younger than ours have done a better job of avoiding the sins of PHP in building scalable systems and can point to their successes in defense of it. But for us, it generally causes a lot of grief, and not a day goes by that I don’t wish that we had made other choices, sooner.

Google trends show there never was much interest in it either, not even a spike. Not a momentary blip of interest:-

http://bit.ly/a1HcII

I’ve always known the thing had nothing behind it, and all the hype and predictions about it becoming the #1 platform and dethroning Java would come to nothing.

Now Scala, on the other hand, now THAT’S a rocking language (on the JVM of course)

There isn’t any „crash-o-matic” caused by Ruby or Rails themselves. You’re quoting Twitter crashes – ridiculous, really. It’s so obvious that I don’t want to comment on this any more – but I can tell you for sure that you should not blame neither Rails nor Ruby solely for this.

„But, there were a lot of holes in Ruby”

To go with your polemics: You mean holes on sense of security holes of PHP?

„Crucial libraries and functionality that PHP’rs took for granted, the Ruby guys could only dream of”

Ah, missing features. Bloated core & friends.
Please just compare the functionality and quality(!) provided by RubyGems and Rails plugins to your beloved PHP PEAR… I just don’t need to say anymore, do I?

„Or they could patch it up with some C code. Ouch!”

Ouch. For ignoring PECL and that facts, that 1.) writing C code is sometimes annoying but not indictable and 2.) the PHP guys do more than the Ruby guys

Last but not least… even if Rails is the killer app of Ruby – you shouldn’t compare them with PHP in a single sentence.
Compare Typo3, Drupal, Symfony (ha-ha) with some Rails applications instead and have a separate look at PHP and Ruby. And last but not least – go to GitHub and browse some Rails related code (including the various plugins). You’ll see that high quality coding with evolved patterns (finite state machines, nested sets) is made so easy due to a great community and the availablity of great plugins. As easy as PHP enables someones „webdesigner nephews“” to blow up the web with their PHP crap.

The above blog post aside, my belief in PHP goes way beyond the core language; I constantly blend business considerations along with nerd considerations.

… I think that perspective is lost on most programmers.

For example, I think PHP is much easier for web designers to learn than Ruby or Python and I think that the PHP community has a few key products out there that are supremely useful to web designers who want to take their skills/solutions to the next level. I am talking about:

- wordpress
- drupal

etc ..

So I look at PHP as being a stepping stone, a compromise for those who want to implement some dynamic capabilities into their sites BUT who may not want to become application developers. That said, with MVC frameworks like Zend, CakePHP etc … PHP also gives users the ability to write sophisticated applications.

I hope that makes sense.

Stefan