Ruby or PHP or ASP.NET
 

For developing web based app, which one will you go for ?

depends what do you need that application to do...
but my vote goes for php.

I'd go for PHP, but only because *NIX servers tend to be more reliable, cheaper and just better than Winblows servers, and because I've never been able to wrap my head around how Rubyonrails actually works, because I'm too used to traditional programming concepts such as coding your own functions and taking it up the ass when something (which it inevitably does) goes wrong.

It doesn't really matter. All 3 technologies you mentioned are mature and will let you serve millions of users. What does matter is how skilled the developer is at using his chosen language.

Ruby on Rails is pretty awesome for a lot of things but it depends on what you need to do. It's slow and a bitch to deploy. PHP is fairly universal but it's a hack job. ASP... ewww. Internal web app I'd go with RoR. For something for others use PHP. Avoid ASP at all costs.

Taking it up the ass is a traditional programming concept? LOL

Ruby on Rails does have a much higher learning curve than PHP but that's because it's a language and a framework. PHP is only a language. PHP is an extremely simple / limited language. Which naturally means it's easy to learn but not very powerful. Ruby has a lot of programming concepts that make programming a joy. The framework is built around best practices such as MVC, code generation, meta-programming, etc.

I highly recommend putting in the time to learn RoR even if you don't plan on using it. It will make you a better programmer. I know it has for me.

I have been doing ASP.NET work for a long time, with Net 3.5 Microsoft improved a lot of things so developing sites is easy.

I dont think we should compare PHP with ASP.NET or RoR since PHP does not have a framwork and you need to use some 3rd party framework.

I am playing with R&R right now and so far like it, but i still code faster in ASP.NET

Jay

php for carts and blogs.

I don't know about that. PHP will let you reach way more users than other languages.

huh? how did you figure this one out?

my vote is asp.net!

depends on the app, the amount of users/visitors, budget,...

the most powerful option: apache + modperl.