Is there any reason to learn Python, Perl or PHP ... or should I learn Ruby on Rails instead?

What do you think will dominate?

Is there any reason to learn Python, Perl or PHP ... or should I learn Ruby on Rails instead?
I started out as a perl developer about 10 years ago then moved to python and now I am developing in php. In my area, there isn't much of a demand for perl or python developers, only php. As it stands right now PHP is the dominate language and probably will be for quite some time.
Reply:PHP and RoR aren't languages. Ruby, Python and Perl are. Why not learn all 3? It's good practice to learn at least one language a year and as these are all scripting languages they can be extremely useful for all sorts of stuff, including build scripts and automating tasks.





I'd suggest you learn Ruby tbh, Perl is very diffucult in comparision, and obfuscated.





All 3 are very worthwhile learning, but start off with Ruby in my opinion, much less of a learning curb and will help you understand and code in Python and Perl. Plus Ruby has some awesome learning aids such as _why's poignant guide to ruby and hackety-hack (see links).





Have fun learning!
Reply:PHP, mysql are taking lots of the market being free does that...so I'd at least take PHP...
Reply:Take php. It's useful to keep you're HTMLs secure and it's not terribly difficult. Also it's free and very popular. Perl is also very popular but I haven't learned it yet so I don't know if it's useful or not. My advice is at-least learn php. Also you should realise that knowing alittle bit of all of those languages is great for experience and gives you more ideas about what you can do. It might be useful to learn all of them at-least in part and them concentrate on learning a few fully.

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