[chaostheory]

Rails is a good framework and Ruby is a great language. I still use both. However, given limited time, I would advise someone new to learn Javascript / Typescript & a framework based on that instead. Why?

1. You will need to learn it anyways

2. It's powerful being able to use one language for both the front and back end. Context changes harm productivity.

3. Javascript & Typescript are the future and both are evolving really fast.

4. The Node.js ecosystem is already pretty mature with a lot of 3rd party libraries.

5. Performance is really good compared to languages like Ruby, Python, or PHP. For near the same simplicity and terseness, you get something with way better performance.

The only downside for beginners is that while the Nodejs world has a ton of libraries and frameworks, there isn't really a dominant framework similar to Rails that provides everything and the kitchen sink as well as a single 'right way' to do everything. The closest thing is Express, but it's really lacking; it's similar to Sinatra. Having to deal with a ton of possible choices and directions for development is just terrible for beginners, which is why Rails is still worth it to learn as your first framework.