I was in your boat 3 years ago. I decided on Ruby on Rails and am very fortunate I made that decision. It's really not as much about efficiency, productivity, e

I was in your boat 3 years ago. I decided on Ruby on Rails and am very fortunate I made that decision. It's really not as much about efficiency, productivity, expense, etc. as it is enjoyment of working in a language/framework that's highly elegant. Learning Ruby on Rails (or Python/Django) will far outweigh productivity gains for your first project. However, it will be worth it in the end. For me, it mostly comes down to the fact that there's almost always an easy answer for questions in Rails. Pagination? Sorting? AJAX? There's usually a "Best" way too, that makes it easy in deciding which library/plugin to choose.