PHP or RoR?

The Agile book says that you should start with the appendices if you have yet to use Ruby. In there, you get the basics on all the syntax. If you are just blindly going through the motions and copying the books code without understanding, how can you learn?

That said, unless you are familiar with web development, go with PHP first. I think its a very good thing to learn the nuts and bolts of whats going on in your application before moving onto a framework, something that abstracts away a lot of those nuts and bolts. If you don't understand whats going on underneath it all, you will never really understand how things are working on the surface.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by tristan The Agile book says that you should start with the appendices if you have yet to use Ruby. In there, you get the basics on all the syntax. If you are just blindly going through the motions and copying the books code without understanding, how can you learn? That said, unless you are familiar with web development, go with PHP first. I think its a very good thing to learn the nuts and bolts of whats going on in your application before moving onto a framework, something that abstracts away a lot of those nuts and bolts. If you don't understand whats going on underneath it all, you will never really understand how things are working on the surface. Good luck!

Well don't want to argue but I don't see how PHP would help you learn ruby ... ruby is OPP .. My advice is first to learn Ruby you can use the notes by Satish Talim or you could enroll in his free ruby course at:
http://rubylearning.org
There is a batch which is going to open soon. And also there is a introductory rails course(it's the first batch so it's I can't tell you anything about it) at:
www.traineronrails.com
I am e student in both courses ... I would say that the free ruby course run by Satish Talim is a great experience and is fun to learn the language. When you learn Ruby it will be much much easier to understand rails.
Regards