
Ask HN: Ruby Dev, is moving to PHP a step backward career wise? - sfrailsdev
My previous projects at the company have all been in Ruby on Rails, but they really want me to move to a PHP framework, as I am probably the last remaining Rails developer.  It&#x27;s not that I can&#x27;t pick it up, I picked up Ruby and Rails when I joined, after Django and Python, but I worry that in the future, if I am looking to move, people are going to look at my resume, see I&#x27;m not using Rails or Node or Golang, and pass. Most of the company is back east and kinda enterprisy, I&#x27;m one of a handful of devs in the bay area office.<p>Thoughts?
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usernamebias
I think a resume with Ruby, Python and soon PHP it will see very little
resistance on the job market. Like the universe, programming languages burn
really hot for a while then, depending how hot it burned, they cool off very
slowly. Sometimes even reigniting. God I love metaphors. My thoughts are,
don't see it as a step down or back, see it as a widen field of vision.
Cultured, season devs are hotter than any language will ever be. Also, never
settle.

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craigmcnamara
I'd wonder why they're pressuring you to move to PHP. I've written PHP in the
past, and recently started maintaining a site in PHP through a company
acquisition. Normally I prefer Ruby on Rails and have used it since Rails
v1.2.3. I consider PHP to be a step backwards technology and tooling wise.
Laravel seems like the nicest copy of Rails, but it seems like everything nice
in PHP is a crude copy of something from the Ruby/Rails ecosystems.

Frequently in PHP I found myself missing a proper REPL, yes PHP can be run
interactively with `$ php -a`, but it doesn't print the last returned value,
so spelunking in a running system is slow and awkward, luckily I've found
Boris([https://github.com/borisrepl/boris](https://github.com/borisrepl/boris))
which is more like IRB or Pry, but it's still unpleasant when I'm trying to
kill a tricky bug. On the package management front Composer is a better
solution than previous PHP offerings, but it's got some quirks that make it
seem unpolished compared to Bundler.

If I was given a choice PHP I would never willingly pick PHP. I suspect your
company is pressuring you to move because they think they can get PHP devs at
a lower cost than Ruby devs. If you're in the Bay Area there are plenty of
companies that will hire you to write Ruby so you don't really have to switch
if you're not comfortable with it.

~~~
jszymborski
Laravel comes with tinker (`$ php artisan tinker`) which is a pretty great
REPL.

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saluki
I moved from Rails to Laravel (PHP).

If they are moving to Laravel it's a great framework, go for it. Some parts
you will like even better than Rails. Hopefully it's Laravel, it's by far the
best php framework. (my opinion).

Pay for Laravel projects and jobs are approaching rails work so I wouldn't
worry too much about pay or opportunities.

If anything you'll be more valuable because you know both.

I would keep at least one personal rails project going so you keep up with
updates, whats new and can roll in to a new rails job in the future if needed.

Keep your Rails skills sharp and you can keep Rails prominently on your
resume.

Good luck.

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themtutty
Do you want to work for a company / team that pre-judges based on the acronyms
in your technology list?

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hidden_sheepman
There is nothing wrong with Php, I would think that if your worried about
companies looking at your resume I think they would be concerned more about
the project you wrote than the language it was written in.

To add to this comment, Solving problems is more important than the language
you implement the solution in. You can write good Php code and the same goes
for any other language. At the end of the day the result is what matters. I
personally think your putting to much emphasis on the language.

~~~
j-pb
That sounds like something a PHP developer would say ;)

I actually moved to a different country just to get a full time clojure
position and it's awesome. I have so much more fun and less frustration at
work .

Granted the team is also great and the product really interesting, but still I
wouldn't want to do it in any less functional language.

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siscia
My thought is that you should aim to do something different from what you are
doing now.

Just change language is not a step forward nor backward.

Keep doing the same type of application over and over with always the same set
of constrains and problem is not a step forward.

I wouldn't worry about change language... I would be worry about don't change
the set of problems you are facing and the kind of tool you are learning.

(with tool I don't mean "git" or "make" but I mean mental tool, paradigms,
ideas.)

~~~
ivraatiems
Another way to put this: In the future, after this job, do you want to work
with someone who'd see the word "PHP" on a resume and discard you as a result?

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nedsma
If you're not _dramatically_ excited to code in PHP, don't do it. I'm not
comparing PHP vs Ruby/RoR vs some other tech stack, it's just that there are
quite many new exciting technologies that might be a better choice. I've seen
it many times developers leaving companies because they didn't find satisfying
companies' new technology choices.

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johnward
Anecdotally, I've been applying to a ton of jobs over the past 2 years. PHP
compensation is much lower than Ruby by my observations. However, having
multiple languages opens you to a wider market. I'll see "senior PHP
developer" jobs that are trying to pay $40k-60k. Where those senior roles in a
Ruby/RoR shop are almost always six figures.

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yolesaber
AS LONG AS YOU GET MORE MONEY YOU GOOD SON

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atsaloli
What are your career goals? (Where are you trying to get to?)

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justanotherbody
I think the kind of php you'll be working on us critical here. Will this be
modern php, or are you being asked to switch to an old framework entrenched in
the company?

If there's a genuine opportunity for growth and learning with modern skills i
think you will always be able to spin that positively

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niftich
Learning, but especially becoming well-versed with an additional
language/platform is never a backwards step.

There are places that hire solely on what language you're using right now, but
there are also companies that know better, and look at your total experience.

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niroze
Someone told me something 20 years ago, "adapt or get left behind" and I think
that applies here.

You need to adapt to the changing technologies, even if they aren't as awesome
to you personally. Why pigeon-hole yourself? I'd rather hire someone that is
adaptable without stubbornness for technology (and usually an ego).

PHP used to be royal crap, but it has a ton of good stuff in it now-a-days, at
least feature and performance-wise.

Being adaptable and open to learning more about programming languages will be
much better for a career. Are you a programmer or not? Do you love programming
or do you love a specific language only? Overcoming challenges and
implementing business needs is one of the best things ever!

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kapv89
Career wise, no. Learning wise, yes, its a step backwards. PHP has nothing new
to offer.

If you want to stick to api/backend dev, pick up node, its "async everything"
mindset is very hard to turn back from once you become accustomed to it. One
big benefit of this would be getting good at javascript, which can help you
become a proper full stack dev(browser, and mobile with react-native).

If you want to explore systems programming, or high perf computation, golang
is a good option.

Or switch to a completely new area of programming, like data science, where
python has a stronghold for now.

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cweagans
PHP developer here. Highly recommend Laravel if you have a choice. It's
basically PHP On Rails.

Also, as someone who has been writing PHP for what many would consider too
long, I can safely say that there's always tons of work to be done. Not all of
it is pretty, but it pays the bills, and there's a lot of really interesting
organizations out there that you can work for.

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Aeolun
PHP is a perfectly valid language. If your entire team is working in PHP,
consider moving to PHP as well. There's nothing making it better or worse than
RoR (well, maybe a few things that are slightly nasty), and having experience
with another language and it's quirks is going to be quite valuable in the
future.

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cdnsteve
What are the other devs backgrounds on the team? We just switched from PHP to
Python and the whole team loves it.

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mdholloway
PHP won't win you any cool points, but there's still a whole lot of it running
in production.

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howlett
You have the opportunity to get paid to learn another language. Give it a go,
if you don't like it look for something else and by that time you'll have
proof that you can pick up new (not 'recent') languages quickly.

But if they ask you to work with PHP 5.3, leave.

~~~
Aeolun
Or don't be part of the problem, inform them that that version has been
deprecated for years, has serious security bugs, and suggest they upgrade as
soon as possible.

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pyb
It's fine, just leave it off your resume afterwards (or have it on there as a
secondary skill) if you find it embarrassing.

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malinens
If it is Symfony/Laravel it will not be step back. I prefer Symfony myself :)

