Is it worth learning ruby on rails?

Hi!
Ok this may sound silly of me but i'm thinking of learning php and ruby on rails.
I know html and css at a beginner/intermediate level.
The main 2 or 3 reasons for looking into learning ruby is last week I had 2 ideas for web apps and don't particularly want to put the entire coding effort into a stranger's hands.
Another reason I've realised is there is a growing demand for ruby coders,so worst case all my online money making "eggs" fail i could always offer my services as a coder.

I have a few questions...

*How easy is it to learn ruby? (particularly considering I already know html and css..so i'm not oblivious to coding lol..unlike say an entrepreneur with no coding skills in client or server side)
*Is it worth learning php and ruby on rails to code a web app? (Is it what i need,I'm assuming from online research that those 2 languages are predomintly used to code web apps)
*Is there other languages i would need to consider learning in making a web app?

on a sidenote,I did notice on sitepoints book matrix,at the beginner's side ruby on rails was listed.
*Is it really as easy as learning html and css?

oh and another question,
*Should i learn ruby before php or vice versa?

Thanks for your help,
arcanus

 

I suggest you not waste your time with ruby, and stick to php because everything that you can do in ruby you can also do in php. The amount of time you are going to spend learning ruby could all go towards practicing and learning more in depth php which will help you out much more.

Thats just my suggestion, and i was even thinking of learning ruby myself. Bad idea

 

Ruby was a required class at my university, and I can honestly say without a doubt that it is a waste of time.
Learn PHP well, then look at Ruby code and you will see what I mean. . .

But to answer your questions; Yes Ruby is easy once you get the hang of it (I think it's growing popularity is due to that fact.) And that you should try PHP first, it might be a bit harder to learn, but it pays off in the long run.
Another language you should consider is Flash Action Script, very fun and very nice to make web applications in.
Java is another lang I would suggest, though making web apps in Java is a bit advanced. n_n

 

If you are looking to make web applications, go with javascript

Im pretty good in both actionscript 2 and 3, and javascript, and i believe javascript has much more potential if you are not worried about all of the transitions and animation stuff

 

It depends on your goal. If you are going to make simple websites through your entire life, you will need just php or ruby.
If you want to go biger and work in a big company, you most likely need java or .net

 

If you want to see a sample of ruby on rails with Ajax, there is a nice video tutorial at codervods.com that can show you what this technology is capable of.

 

You're a spammer You could at least put the url to the video you're talking about...I don't see any video about ROR at your site.

Pretty cool tutorials, though. Hard to navigate.

 

Well at least I can speak from experience as I've developed large scale applications in both PHP and Ruby/ROR.

First of all, Ruby is by far my favorite language. It blows most other scripting languages out of the water with it's syntax. You know a language is good when every time you're using it you're having fun. There is only one major flaw that keeps me from using it all that much, the benchmarks on it are horrible. Despite it being one of the best scripting languages in my eyes, it's certainly the slowest. Even running the ROR environment with webrick on my computer produced pretty slow functioning websites. While it's possible to overcome this with something like a dedicated server, for general applications it's simply too slow.

This being said, I would suggest just going on with PHP. There's always PHPCake, which is a direct translation of ROR into PHP, but to be honest ROR is designed to used with Ruby and any copycats pretty much fail miserably at trying to reproduce it.

 

me tooo workn in ruby. i feel its a gud language
for learning ruby quickly use this site keep on looking its updating on basis of user choice

http://rubyonrails-tutor.blogspot.com/

 

RoR is a great framework for building large serious apps, its easy to develop apps quickly with. The great thing about RoR is that it basically forces you to program correctly. Its actually hard to structure a program in a bad way when using the RoR framework because of the way everything is structured.

I agree that it is slower than php in terms of app speed but as things progress RoR is going form strength to strength and will be up with the big boys of web app programming very soon IMHO. Having said that, if you are only going to be writing small or simple scripts php is easier to learn initially as it doesn't require that you understand the MVC structure to get things working.

 

i kno both PHP n ruby to an extent. the main reason i go for ROR is the time which is a great factor for giant companies n beginners with less patience in programming n also ruby is gettin famous for the same. I SUGGEST RUBY ON RAILS

 

I know this is an old thread that someone bumped but still...

Check out the framework for Python called Django. I've spent time learning both and to me Python makes more sense than Ruby. Like people have said, there really isn't anything you can do in Ruby or Python that you can't do in PHP. If you're just learning because you're a perpetual student like me then definitely check out Django.

BTW, Google uses loads of Python and no Ruby. Just saying.

 

It is certainly worth learning ruby on rails.i personally learnt it online...if u want i can give u the trainers number..just pm me.