Ruby and PHP: Which Is The Best Fit For Your Startup?
This article was originally posted on Codica Blog.
So, you want to start a new project from scratch, and you’re looking for the best web development platform. When it comes to web programming languages, it’s not that easy to make a choice which complies with your requirements.
In the following article, we’re going to compare Ruby vs. PHP in 2018 and find the main pros and cons of critical aspects of both technologies. The latest versions of languages are Ruby 2.5 and PHP 7.2. All statistics shown below is relevant for June 2018.
Both languages are more than 20 years old, mature and proven in production. A lot of great products were created on their basis. So let’s look at these technologies from the beginning.
History
PHP invented as an HTML templating language in 1994 is now a reliable web development technology which can be used even for general purpose. In contrast, Ruby was released in 1995 as a general purpose object-oriented language but is now mainly applied in the web development due to Ruby on Rails success.
Although both programming languages initially had different aims, currently they are highly competitive technologies on the web development scene.
Philosophy
One of the main differences between Ruby and PHP relies on their philosophies.
The primary objects of Ruby were pleasure and productivity of developers who wish to work with stylish, elegant and flexible language.
I believe people want to express themselves when they program. They don’t want to fight with the language. Programming languages must feel natural to programmers. I tried to make people enjoy programming and concentrate on the fun and creative part of programming when they use Ruby.
— Yukihiro Matsumoto, Ruby creator
That’s why this language syntax is so elegant and beautiful. Developers love it and enjoy programming in it.
Coming back to PHP, it was primarily written for the personal purpose of Rasmus Lerdorf, its creator. Initially, he just wanted to count the number of visits of his online resume.
Well, I didn’t plan PHP. I think in terms of solving problems, not in terms of software projects. I actually hate programming, but I love solving problems.
— Rasmus Lerdorf
Soon, the simplicity of PHP attracted a lot of programmers in the web development world, and within several years it evolved into the first mass-market scripting language. But popularity had a reverse side. Due to the rapid growth, it was tough to create a good language design. A lot of articles were written in that manner as “PHP: a fractal of bad design”.
Many developers switch from PHP to Ruby or Python because the design of the two latter is much better.
Comparison list
We’re going to compare the following aspects of both web technologies:
- Learning Curve
- Frameworks
- Popularity
- Community
- Cost of developers
- Speed and performance
So, let’s start our brief survey.
1. Learning Curve
While studying Ruby or PHP, both technologies have a short learning curve. There are a lot of online interactive tutorials, for example, Learn PHP or Try Ruby.
Ruby code example:
odd_numbers = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9]
odd_numbers.each do |odd_number|
puts odd_number
endPHP code example:
<?php
$odd_numbers = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9];
foreach ($odd_numbers as $odd_number) {
echo $odd_number . "\n";
}
?>As you see, PHP example has an open tag <?php. Now developers don’t mix any other parts of codes (like HTML or CSS) with PHP as before but still have to use such open tag at the beginning of the file. This action confirms precise compatibility with the oldest versions of the language.
Unlike the languages, frameworks have the steep learning curve. Even for experienced developers, it’s not that easy to effectively operate with several frameworks at the moment.
2. Frameworks
Let’s take a look at web frameworks.
In this table, you can find main frameworks of both languages and the number of the Github stars. As it shows, Rails is the front-runner in the world of Ruby, while in PHP world, Laravel took over the show.
While Rails is dominating over other Ruby frameworks, competition between PHP frameworks is much stronger because PHP gained popularity long before any other web development languages did it.
From the other side, Rails has gained fame of the first mass MVC framework in the web. A lot of frameworks in many languages including PHP have copied ideas from Rails and Laravel was among them.
3. Popularity
There is a variety of online resources providing statistics on the prevalence of these two programming languages.
3.1 Websites written in Ruby and PHP
As W3Techs statistic cites, PHP is an absolute leader in the number of websites written in it.
The total percentage of PHP use comprises 83.5%. However, it is necessary to admit that a huge part of the PHP market is composed of such CMS as Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla.
3.2 Sites built with frameworks
BuiltWith.com shows that Rails framework is more popular in comparison with PHP frameworks.
As we see, the biggest numbers in all categories has sites build in Ruby on Rails.
3.3 Programming languages ranking
Spectrum statistics “The top programming language” points that the rate of Ruby for web development is higher than PHP.
As stated by Github report, Ruby was more popular than PHP by the number of pull requests in 2017.
Overall, although PHP is more popular among all sites, Ruby (and Rails) prevails over PHP by the number of developers’ activity on the Github and websites built with frameworks.
Many PHP projects were formerly written without any framework or reinstalled as copies of Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal systems. Whereas, a vast amount of custom projects and startups was created with Rails.
4. Community
A community built around a programming language represents an excellent force for developers.
Both technologies have great communities. One of the main distinctive features in Ruby vs. PHP comparison is that Ruby has one community based on the Rails framework, while PHP has numerous communities fragmented depending on a framework or existing products.
In general, we can highlight three branches in the PHP community:
- Developers who work with Laravel, Symfony, etc. frameworks and create projects from scratch.
- Programmers who exclusively engineer in Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal systems. They are involved in the customization process of those products for their clients.
- Developers who are aimed to maintain and support websites written before the emergence of modern PHP frameworks.
In this regard, it is fair to compare Rails developers and those PHP developers who work with frameworks. Consequently, the number of Laravel developers, for example, are less than Rails programmers.
In contrast, we can’t downplay the big circle which the strong Ruby on Rails community formed on Github. Together they focus on a robust and a high-quality development, making a significant contribution to collaborative efforts.
5. Cost of developers
There is an opinion that PHP developers are cheaper and could be found easier than Ruby (Rails) developers.
The truth is that the price for the developers’ services depends on their qualifications, and the highly qualified programmers are well paid in both languages.
Actually, at the moment “PHP developer” term doesn’t exist as before. Right now we can talk about Symfony or Drupal developers, for example. And the cost of Rails and Laravel / Symfony engineers is approximately the same.
Below you can find Indeed statistics concerning job postings for both web technologies.
As it is shown, the demand level for the programmers of both languages was nearly the same.
But at the same time, demand level for Rails developers is higher than for Laravel which is the top PHP framework.
6. Speed and performance
Now, all people in web communities do is compare Ruby vs PHP technologies performance.
Having a look at the history, we can find that Ruby and PHP used to have approximately the same speed at some points. But now PHP 7.2 speed is significantly improved. It is much faster than the previous versions. Besides, there’s a room for growth, since 7.3 is on the way now available in alpha version. Good work, now the ball is in Ruby court.
On releasing Ruby 2.5 in December 2017, the community introduced up to 10% performance improvement comparing to Ruby 2.4 and presented a lot of other significant updates. Now the Ruby community is looking forward to release Ruby 2.6 available in preview now. Equally important is the Ruby 3x3 initiative which tends to triple the Ruby performance in its third version.
Although the developers tend to improve technologies performance, it’s not the reason to opt for any language just because of its speed. A hardware upgrading would be a more practical solution to the situation.
Advantages
Each of the given programming languages has its unique aspects and unique energy, serving the purpose for which they were invented. So let’s take a glance at the strong sides of both.
Disadvantages
Just like the strengths, there are always some pitfalls in each language. Anyway, there’s still room for improvement.
Summary
When choosing between these two programming languages, you won’t find a definite answer which is the best one. Both of them have benefits and drawbacks.
Now PHP has improved performance, but its language design is still weak. Ruby needs some speed increase but has an elegant design and syntax. They both allow producing beautiful and robust web applications.
At Codica we chose Ruby because we like the philosophy, design and simplicity of this language.
But regardless of which language we use, the primary mission for us is helping our clients gain their business aims. As a cutting-edge company, we always deliver business-tailored solutions which our customers enjoy using.
Originally published at www.codica.com.
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