I just wanted to add my two cents because I'm actually just learning Rails right now. I had never messed with Ruby or Rails at all until two months ago and I've

I just wanted to add my two cents because I'm actually just learning Rails right now. I had never messed with Ruby or Rails at all until two months ago and I've actually enjoyed how easy it is to build basic applications with Rails quite quickly. I came from PHP and did a lot of work with CakePHP and some with Zend Framework. I found CakePHP fun to work with but often limiting. I found ZF unpleasant to work with and often just as limiting because the effort involved in doing certain simple tasks was often too much. With Rails I was able to crank out some basic functionality quite quickly and the only hang up I've come across is learning how to create plugins. Then again, the plugins I need are often out there in the world and I could probably get away with never having to write one. I still think Rails is incredibly easy to learn the basics of but it also is well developed and thought out leaving plenty of room for more advanced behavior without running into the same walls I feel I ran into with PHP development. Since I started with Rails 3, I don't have any perspective on how difficult it is to keep up with the changes but I must say I'm excited about 3.1 and I don't mind having to dig into whatever information I can scrounge up to familiarize myself with it.