What is PHP's philosophy? Getting stuff easily online? I don't find that foolish. On Ruby, is programmer happiness a foolish idea?
the biggest thing that ruby and php have in common is that they're both hamstrung by their terrible interpreters.
the second biggest thing is that the languages were conceived and championed by amateurs whose proposed philosophies are just fine (though vague), but the execution is horrendous.
example regarding php's philosophy: about all php has going for it is how easy it is to get started. that's it, and it hasn't even done that right. php has a rich history of horrible decisions made in the name of being easy - register globals, magic quotes.
two failed implementations of a vague philosophy - ease of use & programmer happiness. brought to you by php and ruby.
many thanks in advance
try python or perl.
That said, Ruby is still my 'favorite' language -- it's just so much fun to code. But the libraries, and frankly horrible interpreter, have caused me to chuck it out the window for my company. The speed actually isn't the big problem -- it's the long-term maintainability and flexibility.