I’m writing this post as a backup for my current research on Ruby on Rails tandem.
As it seems, Ruby is a more mature OO programming language than PHP. It allows more flexible, human-closer constructions, like for example: 5.minutes + 10.hours
The Ruby seasoned developers describe coding in Ruby as a real fun, I suppose, because of the more human-closer constructions and pure OO approach. In addition to this comes the Rails framework, which utilizes the advantages of Ruby and this results in a really power platform for developing web applications, allowing a great increase of productivity (and fun, while producing 😉 ).
I was very attracted to learning and using RoR after the research, but as it seems, the learning curve takes not exactly little time. And having few projects on the top, plus still learning Zend Framework – it would be a hard burden to carry at once.
However, it seems as a nice investment in technology as it has a lot of potential and there will be open jobs for RoR development rising for the next few years. So, I’m currently not able to dedicate a lot of time in learning RoR, but I would probably do it the near future. I will probably also play with it meanwhile, when there is free time.
Below are the resources I found most informative, while researching for the current topic.
Pro RoR:
http://flnotes.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/should-one-learn-ruby-on-rails/
http://rewrite.rickbradley.com/pages/moving_to_rails/
http://www.buildingwebapps.com/articles/79208-the-rebuilding-and-scaling-of-yellowpages-com
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/26/successful-freelancing-with-ruby-on-rails-workflow-techniques-and-tools/
Pro Zend Framework:
http://www.marksanborn.net/php/why-i-use-the-zend-framework/
(Single but enough for me and reflecting exactly my current point of view)