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This is a pretty bad illustration of Ruby since the two listings are very close in spirit and almost in syntax as well. There are plenty of examples where Ruby will shine over PHP, but this is definitely not one of them.

Ascribing value systems to tools is silly.

Like the author, I prefer Ruby to do web programming. I too dislike PHP. But other completely rational people will come to decisions to use PHP, Python, Java, Perl, or whatever. The reason they make similar tools is that different people will prefer one over the other. And god bless 'em. The point is what are people building. When looking at a house, you value the house's craftmanship. You don't care if the builder used a 12" Craftsman Mitre saw or a 12" Ryobi saw. You want to make sure they understood what you needed built, and built it competently.

Web applications are about building functionality for people and very, very few people care about the tools used to build it. They care about how east it is to maintain, improve, and expand. How easy it will be to find someone to do those tasks. How the initial builder will understand the vision to begin with. No one tool gives you those abilities. Building, learning, and working with people give you those abilities. For some that process is easier with Ruby, others its PHP.

While I agree that the syntax of the ruby test is cleaner, syntax alone is not worth comparing. And I don't get the analogy at all.

How did this get to the front page with a 4:9 up:down vote? I know 4 ups is the threshhold for hitting the front page, but don't the down votes mitigate that? Am I missing something?