We do not get much projects in Ruby, we are so far focused only on PHP. As a web development agency are we missing an important channel of revenue due to our unopened nature with Ruby and Ruby on Rails? If we start doing some local projects, learn Ruby, is is possible to open another revenue channel? Is it wise to ask PHP developers to learn Ruby too?
With our expertise in search Engine Expertise, we can promote Ruby and reach people who does Ruby projects, But are they a big crowd?
Thanks,
I would say it depends entirely on your customer base. If you are building website for companies that like to dictate the technology stack, then yeah, you could probably open up another revenue channel by offering ruby development.
However, I believe that most of the time customers don't care too much about what technology you use - they just want the job done on time and under budget. In these cases offering Ruby probably won't do much for you other than widen your horizons/options (which I believe is a good thing, but not necessarily tied to revenue).
Focus is good and diversity is good. It is sort of a "how long is a piece of string".
PHP is a strong maturing language, widely used, supported, and easy to learn. Ruby on the other hand is quite different, it involves a lot more command line calls.
Ruby is highly praised and there is quite a good solution. It is a lot quicker to make applications.
CodeIgniter / Zend are PHP frameworks which might be worth looking at.
Can you afford to train people in a new language?
Dale
Ruby on Rails and PHP are both capable of doing the same kind of things. Some people just find it easier or more pleasant with RoR. Unless you find you're losing gigs specifically because you want Rails, I wouldn't worry about it as a "channel of revenue" — it seems unlikely to me, since most non-developers don't have any idea what "the PHP" is anyway.
It is probably worth checking out just to see what your options are. You might find it works out well for you. But the benefits will generally be on the development side of things.
At this point, I think that Ruby on Rails is bigger with people that are building things themselves than it is with people that are paying other people to build things. That may change over time.
Do you feel like you are being hired now because of your PHP skills or on your general reputation as a web dev agency? Most customers probably do not care.
Use what makes you most productive. In your shoes, I would certainly be giving RoR a good look as I like it better myself. If you find that RoR makes your job easier then use it. If not, maybe do not bother. There are many Rails inspired MVC frameworks for PHP though which you could look at as well.
There is certainly more buzz around Ruby on Rails these days so it may make you look more plugged in sometimes.
I do not see a problem with expecting devs to learn it. Your better devs would probably love the opportunity. With the world going Agile though, it probably makes sense to let the devs choose the technology unless there is a market-driven reason to change.