I think the analogy fails because trucks and sedans are different tools for different purposes (one is better for transporting people, one is better for transporting cargo), while PHP and Ruby pretty much do the same thing, one is just prettier and streamlined.
Says who?
>>> one is just prettier and streamlined.
By which objective measure of "prettier" and "streamlined"?
Says the fact that PHP and Ruby are both object oriented imperative scripting languages that are commonly used for connecting to a DB and spitting out markup. It's impossible to shove a refrigerator into the back of a sedan, but there is no analogous refrigerator that PHP xor Ruby is incapable of hauling.
By which objective measure of "prettier" and "streamlined"?
Well it is subjective, but the nebulous consensus is that Ruby has a cleaner and more readable syntax than PHP.
>>> Well it is subjective, but the nebulous consensus is that Ruby has a cleaner and more readable syntax than PHP.
Consensus of whom? "Nobody I know voted for him", right?
That's a straw man, I didn't use that as a criteria.
PHP and Ruby are both object oriented imperative scripting languages that are commonly used for connecting to a DB and spitting out markup
See that? That's me describing specific qualities of the languages that make them similar. Of course, you could use Ruby or PHP to write a graphics engine (in fact, I have done so with Ruby), but that is not a common use case. Most of the time, Ruby and PHP are used to solve the same set of problems: scripting server-side logic for the web.
Consensus of whom?
The internet? The programming community? That's why I used the "nebulous" qualifier. I'm not saying it's a fact, but it's a pretty popular sentiment which is about as solid as it gets with regard to matters of taste.
Yes, PHP and Ruby are different, but most of the time they are used to do the same thing.
Yes, they are both imperative, non-compiled and can be used to do network connections and output texts. Doesn't really narrow it down. Any further restriction (like narrowing network connections to DBs and texts to HTML or any other specific markup language) just makes it false.
>>> scripting server-side logic for the web
That's closer, but so do tons of other languages.
>>> The internet? The programming community?
See, I just talked to the internet and she says she never told you that.
>>> it's a pretty popular sentiment
Among your friends? I certainly can believe that.
>>> as solid as it gets with regard to matters of taste
Absolutely no problem with taste. The problem comes when somebody tries to declare his taste to be an objective truth.