Ask HN: Is it a bad idea to learn PHP/Laravel instead of Ruby/RoR? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it a bad idea to learn PHP/Laravel instead of Ruby/RoR?

3 pointswmboy7 comments

I'm the owner of a web development business, initially we did WordPress only, but since then, we've been taking on a fair amount of custom web app projects (using the Rails framework) which my co-founder has built & maintained.

He's decided to move back to his home country, and me being only slightly technical I've needed to find Rails developers who can support current applications.

My initial goal was to learn Ruby myself, and get to at least a junior-to-intermediate level so I can be in a better position to grow the custom development side of our business.

However, as part of this process, I've seen how few Ruby developers there are in my city (Auckland) compared with PHP developers. I've even found a larger PHP development company that is happy to partner with us (when needed) and support new web apps built using Laravel and Angular.

So, my thinking now is that in my situation it'd be better for us to switch to Laravel moving forward, and properly learn object-oriented PHP and the Laravel framework, as opposed to Ruby on Rails.

After all...our clients couldn't care less what their website's written in, only that it works well, and is supported well by us.

What do you guys think?

I've used both Rails and Laravel. The past two years I've been doing more and more Laravel work. Clients seem to be more comfortable with their apps being PHP based vs Ruby/Rails that they aren't as familiar with.

I would recommend learning Laravel.

It's a great framework with lots of great tools.

Homestead and Forge save tons of time and make deployment really easy to Digital Ocean or AWS.

Laravel spark looks really promising to speed up SaaS app development.

And laracasts.com is a great place to learn.

Rails is elegant . . . Laravel while not quite as elegant is similar and might even be improving/innovating to be a better framework.

Good luck.

Nobody can make the decision of which language to use for you. Both options can work fine, it all comes down the details of your experience, your goals, and the current situation/state of affairs.

I've done extensive development in both of these languages/frameworks (and many more). I'd be happy to hop on a call with you to provide additional information to help you decide; my email address is in my profile.

Thanks Jay, just sent you an email. And yeah, I see your point, guess I'm just not ready to make a decision yet.

I was definitely planning on Ruby initially, but after my experience with the job market and available local resources I'm now leaning towards PHP.

If this is a business decision, then all else being equal I would have to suggest you go where the money is.

And you could certainly do much worse in PHP than Laravel and Angular.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of either Ruby or PHP. Ruby is a hipster programming language. Ruby developers have a tendency to get really hung up on syntax. It's tough to get them to work in any other language because they complain about semi-colons and curly braces.They like to say stuff like "when you don't have to worry about semi colons and curly braces it frees your mind up to think about your app."(If colons an curly braces are too difficult for you to think about your app you probably shouldn't be a programmer. Maybe write Haiku instead.)

PHP devs often have very poor coding habits due to the fact that it's so easy to mix PHP and HTML and do things in a procedural style.

Whichever direction you go in, those are some things to look out for when hiring devs.

I think the scarcity of Ruby devs verses the abundance of PHP devs in your location is a compelling reason to switch to PHP.

Have you considered Node JS? I'm not familiar with the scene in Auckland, but most developers I know would prefer working with Node JS to PHP. Choosing a language that developers want to use is a good way to attract top talent.

Yeah I guess Node.js could be another option for us, certainly all web developers already know JavaScript anyway.

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