That's a tough one for me because I have no PHP experience and I don't think Luke has any Rails experience. I know that given a choice of Java vs. Rails for web development I would recommend Rails hands down (and in fact I moved one of my own sites from one to the other), but that's probably not much help for you.
One thing I could recommend is that if you find that you learn well from video resources that you look at some of the instruction made available by Railscasts.com (free) and PeepCode.com (small fees per video). There are also some introductory screencasts available at RubyonRails.com. Perhaps you could watch some material on both and see if one appeals more than the other. Alternatively perhaps flipping through some books might help. Simply Rails 2.0 might give you something you could compare against a good starting book for CakePHP.
Luke
· 10 months ago
I actually do have a very slight amount of Rails experience - although by now that experience might as well be nothing. Personally, I would recommend Django - have you already unconsidered it? Python is super-intuitive and easy to learn for new and experienced programmers, and the indentation-based scoping makes it so that Python code is a lot easier to read than the more brace-happy languages.
When I *was* working with Rails, one book that I found indispensable was Agile Web Development with Rails - it was a great walkthrough on getting up and running with Rails(and if I remember correctly, it had an appendix that taught you enough Ruby to understand what you were actually doing).
Personally, I would recommend against using PHP - while there are definitely arguments *for* it, there are enough arguments against it that you should probably steer clear. Using a PHP framework like CakePHP or CodeIgniter might change that(I'm afraid I haven't tried one yet), but in my experience PHP tends to almost encourage you to write poor, shoddy code. I'm not saying that's all you can write - but if you want to build things seriously, you will need to be a lot more careful with PHP in order to write good, maintainable code.
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One thing I could recommend is that if you find that you learn well from video resources that you look at some of the instruction made available by Railscasts.com (free) and PeepCode.com (small fees per video). There are also some introductory screencasts available at RubyonRails.com. Perhaps you could watch some material on both and see if one appeals more than the other. Alternatively perhaps flipping through some books might help. Simply Rails 2.0 might give you something you could compare against a good starting book for CakePHP.
now that experience might as well be nothing.
Personally, I would recommend Django - have you already unconsidered it?
Python is super-intuitive and easy to learn for new and experienced
programmers, and the indentation-based scoping makes it so that Python code
is a lot easier to read than the more brace-happy languages.
When I *was* working with Rails, one book that I found indispensable was
Agile Web Development with Rails - it was a great walkthrough on getting up
and running with Rails(and if I remember correctly, it had an appendix that
taught you enough Ruby to understand what you were actually doing).
Personally, I would recommend against using PHP - while there are definitely
arguments *for* it, there are enough arguments against it that you should
probably steer clear. Using a PHP framework like CakePHP or CodeIgniter
might change that(I'm afraid I haven't tried one yet), but in my experience
PHP tends to almost encourage you to write poor, shoddy code. I'm not saying
that's all you can write - but if you want to build things seriously, you
will need to be a lot more careful with PHP in order to write good,
maintainable code.