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General Discussion

Posted by Hammad Ahmed
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Hammad Ahmed
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 11,910 Points

PHP Laravel vs. Ruby on Rails vs. JavaScript Node.js

Although PHP is reigning the web with 80% usage, there are more Ruby courses on TTH. Node.js seems to be emerging around these days. I've a prior knowledge of PHP but I'm looking ahead to learning something new or stick with it that will be best for the future.

Hammad Ahmed
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Hammad Ahmed
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 11,910 Points

Any answer comparing security, simplicity, strength and community support.

3 Answers

Henrik Hansen
Henrik Hansen
23,176 Points
Henrik Hansen
Henrik Hansen
23,176 Points

I think Node.js will be a great tech, since it will allow you to write both frontend and backend in javascript. But as of today, it is hard to find a web host whom supports Node.js. But I don't think Php will disappear anytime soon. You still have the option for setting up your own Node.js capable server if you're really interested.

Michael Bianchi
Michael Bianchi
2,488 Points
Michael Bianchi
Michael Bianchi
2,488 Points

I think Ruby is more secure. 80% of users use PHP, like Henrik said - and it's been that way for a very long time. That is also one reason why half of that 80% has terrible security flaws in them because of lazy programming.

I'd go with Rails - it's safer, it's just as simple as PHP and there's plenty of support for deployment as well as learning resources. Before you go with that, though, remember that it's 90% all about your personal preference. The end-user usually doesn't care how you get the job done. Only us geeks care :D

Kevin Phillips
Kevin Phillips
15,693 Points
Kevin Phillips
Kevin Phillips
15,693 Points

Just to add to the discussion: in response to Henrik's comment that "it is hard to find a web host whom supports Node.js" - I did some digging around at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and discovered their tool Elastic Beanstalk:

Link here.

"Elastic Beanstalk is a high-level deployment tool that helps you get an app from your desktop to the web in a matter of minutes. Elastic Beanstalk handles the details of your hosting environment—capacity provisioning, load balancing, scaling, and application health monitoring—so you don't have to.

Elastic Beanstalk supports apps developed in Java, PHP, .NET, Node.js, Python, and Ruby, as well as different container types for each language."