Is Ruby a good language?

If you want to learn OOP basics, Ruby will definetly the best choice, also it has build in functional programming structures. Java or other languages have some gaps in their OOP concepts, but in Ruby, nearly everything except a few like blocks is an object. So, you can practice OOP more accurately.

As a result, spending your time with Ruby is not a bad idea.

Ruby is a very powerful language and will certainty mind boggle you at times if you are inexperienced with programming. The amount of effort to learn it will force you to appreciate its abilities if you wish to transition to Ruby on Rails, web server component of Ruby. I personally learned PHP as my first programming language, without real consideration of what I was getting into to and I felt Java would have been a smoother learning process as it is not as complex as Ruby can be yet still entails a powerful engine. I would suggest attempting Java and then venturing off into Ruby later on once you have a strong understanding of the fundamentals.

Ruby is a very powerful language. It has a very powerful function that applied with a simple install of GEM. Ruby also has a friendship and javascript features. But you should know first JavaScript then start learning Ruby. If you like to build a social app, I strongly recommend using ruby and Ruby on Rails. It is better than writing lots of code in PHP. Ruby might seem complicated but it is only a little, it is a challenging language. Little Tip: if you want to build an authentication system download rails 3.2.16 to keep out of trouble in the future. Hope that help's you.

A social networking website, you could accomplish with both PHP/HTML or Ruby/Ruby on Rails. Ruby and Java are similar in that they both are very focused in the use of Objects; however, Ruby is a lot less strict when initializing variables. In java you would have to declare that your variable is an integer/string/etc. whereas in Ruby you don't. There's a great deal of similiarities and differences, here's a short summary of some: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/ruby-from-other-languages/to-ruby-from-java/ . Ruby on Rails is the web framework while Ruby is the server sided programming; so essentially RoR serves the same purpose as HTML.

I also am curious about this. I want to know which would be better, or more suitable, Ruby or PHP? Java is my first language I learned, so by the sounds of it, the basics shouldn't be very hard to grasp? I hear PHP can be quite messy since it's not very structured, or organized; but it is s[ecifically for the web and powers some of the biggest sites on the web. Then I hear Ruby gives the programmer a better way to organize their code, but does nothing more than what PHP can do..So I'm left with the question, which should Iearn, first perhaps?... I wouldn't touch the other until later down the road. I'm only 17, so I'm sure standards will change, etc.

It depends on what you plan on doing. PHP is very simple if you plan to use it as the back end for a web server, although it is made for beginners. Ruby on Rails would be far more structured and organized; however, it would probably take more time to understand and become proficient. If you have a strong basis of OOP, then I would definitely give Ruby on Rails a shot.

So if I wanted to go into more social networking, would you guys recommend Ruby over PHP? And how similar is Ruby to Java? What are the differences between Ruby and RoR?

Ruby is all object oriented all the time as they say "everything in Ruby is an object".