Title: The best of both worlds
Date: 23 May 2007
URL: https://ralovely.com/blog/2007/05/23/the-best-of-both-worlds/
Author: Raphael Campardou
Archived: yes

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This is an old post, kept here for posterity. Some links may be broken, opinions may have changed, and technology has certainly moved on.

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Though I don't consider myself as a programmer, I still do program and learn programming a lot.  
I evolve in the <acronym title="Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP">LAMP</acronym> sphere (or should I say <acronym title="MacOSX-Apache-MySQL-PHP">MAMP</acronym>...), and I really dig PHP. It's simple, has a really wide community (even became [mainstream](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/php_becoming_ma.html) according to O'Reilly) and allows quick-and-dirty scripting as well as well-planned-and-thorough coding. I don't use a framework yet, even if [CakePHP](http://www.cakephp.org/) seems to be a good one.

But for two or three years now, the buzz was elsewhere. And, as an early adopter, I must say, I can't stay indifferent to _the buzz_.  
The buzz is with [Ruby](http://www.ruby-lang.org/). Or to be a little more specific, it's with [Ruby On Rails](http://www.rubyonrails.org/), **the** Ruby framework.  
The Rails framework is the pure-genius creation of a bunch of guys at [37signals](http://37signals.com/) (more on them later... stay tuned!.. Check their [blog](http://www.37signals.com/svn) meanwhile :). It's really impressive and well thought. So, I decided to give it a try.  
First, because it's on fire right now, but most of all because it's really (really) impressive (am I repeating myself here?).  
I'm not saying that I'm switching my main language. But following an advice that seems wise to me (though not really always practical), learning other languages can teach a lot more than just that (the advice is from [Pragmatic Programmers](http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/), and tells you to learn a language a year).  
Ruby is a real Object Oriented Language, and PHP, since v.5 is becoming one.  
**Learning Ruby will be a great way to improve my PHP skills.**  
There are many resources on Ruby and Rails. I'll only point [here](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails), [Google](http://www.google.com/search?q=ruby%20on%20rails) will do the rest.  
Oh!, and go see these very neat [screencasts](http://www.railscasts.com/) too.

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For the humans reading the machine-readable version: hello. You're thorough. I appreciate that.