regarding Ruby: Ruby is dynamic. Kind of like Perl, Python and PHP, but meta-programming features make it feel even more powerful. Ruby is object-oriented. Ev

regarding Ruby: Ruby is dynamic. Kind of like Perl, Python and PHP, but meta-programming features make it feel even more powerful. Ruby is object-oriented. Even more than, let's say, Java. No primitive data types. Even things like regular expressions and pieces of program code are objects. This makes the language feel very consistent. Ruby is beautiful. The syntax and consistency appeal to many developers for a variety of reasons. For me it's the fact, that if you adhere to some common sense rules of naming your variables and methods you get extremely readable code. Ruby has some unique and interesting features. Such as code blocks (kind of closures). Combined this means that you can accomplish a lot with very small amounts of actual code. Still, this code remains extremely readable and thus maintanable. For many developers, Ruby ist the last language they ever want to learn. But to be honest, I think it is not for everyone. You should try it and see if it feels "right" for you. Do not worry, if you don't get it, and maybe try Python instead. regarding Rails: Today, I guess Rails is nothing special anymore. These days you can choose from a variety of quality web frameworks in whatever language you are comfortable with (and most of those probably borrow some ideas from Rails). To understand what really set Rails apart you have to imagine the world of web development in 2004, when Rails was first released. Back then you had to either use PHP, which has a bad reputation for many reasons I do not want to delve into, or some ridiculously complex Java framework. Rails was (and still is) a wonderful framework that takes the tediousness out of many repetitive web development tasks. Furthermore it gives your project a structure, trying to lead you to write well-structured, testable and maintainable code. Oh, and of course Rails is written in Ruby. Rails introduced many people to the Ruby programming language. I think it is the combination that makes it both so powerful and likeable.