Choosing a web dev platform: Rails or PHP (2009)

Um, one could argue that Rails has lost quite a bit of hype recently, mostly to the hands of Node.js, but Node isn't as mature as Rails was at that time, nor trying to solve the same problem.

PHP is still hugely popular, and much better than it was in 2009, and still getting better, ever so slowly. Arguably because of the beauty of Rails.

Depending on one's definition of "enterprise", Java is slowly become less enterprise, pulled towards to cool side of the Force by Clojure and Scala.

And I'l go out on a limb and say that the evolution of front-end technologies, and the popularity of REST interfaces makes the current web friendlier towards wacky multi-language setups, hence friendlier towards wacky languages.

You see people suggesting stuff like using a compiled lang as the REST server for a front-end JS app using a Node.js instance to do server-side rendering.

But no.

The conclusion remains: it's totally legit to start new projects in PHP these days.

Oh yeah I almost forgot: lots of people are making websites in Python. I guess it's useful if one wants to have a comfortably mainstream webdev experience while taking advantage of the incredibly rich Python ecosystem.