Like Rachel, I was taken back by the Ruby example. Mainly because the example given was using a for loop rather than foreach loop, which would have done away with some of the complexity demonstrated!

I agree with both Rachel and Philip here. It is a perception problem. As a PHP developer myself, I started to look around at other languages about a year ago. One to broaden horizons and two, people where asking for RoR a lot.

Ruby does have some sytax advantages over PHP, as everything is an object. However since PHP5, everything I do as OO in PHP feels cleaner and closer to the RoR examples always given. Now PHP has most of the tools required to exist in an OO world. PHP6 will add the rest it seems.

I personally think that frameworks like RoR and Django are just enjoying a lot of buzz because they’re new and some-how got that awful ‘Web 2.0’ label associated with them. I have had clients asking for a site in RoR and when asking them why they simply say “because it’s new and web 2.0” – yuk! If the clients are asking for RoR without knowing why, we’re all in trouble.

But I think PHP is still going to be used for many years to come. A particular framework that I use, Kohana PHP (http://www.kohanaphp.com), has helped re-invigorate my confidence in PHP and is enjoying some popularity.