[orangethirty]

Is it worth learning? Depends. Do you want to get gigs doing Rails? What attracts you to it?

What benefits over CI does RoR have?

Right now, none. You dont know Rails, but you know CI. The time it takes you to learn RoR and its use of "magic" might be better spent writing your application and testing if there is demand for it.

Sure, RoR has a lot of "reusable code", but you don't hknow the framework. And that will just kill your project.

Build your basic app with CI, and then translate it into something else. I wouldnt stray away from PHP if you are proficient with it. You may try other frameworks like Laravel, which is very nice and is more modern that CI. It is also dead-easy to work with. You might also want to check out Python/Flask or even Django, since they are a bit easier to work with than Rails. Im not saying they are better, so put your pitchforks back in the barnyard.

[therustytracks]

There's no rush or urgency to build the app I have in mind. It's going to be a learning experience. I'm just tired of using the same framework and php. I've been doing quite a bit of node.js at work and it's pretty sweet. I just want to branch out and try new languages / technologies. The app I have in mind will be using phantomjs, possibly backbone for the frontend, and it looks like I'll be learning RoR for the backend.

[orangethirty]

That changes everything. Go learn RoR then. It will be lots of fun. Boy, do I envy you! Rails is definitely a joyful ride. Just don't listen to much to the fanboys and their absurdly complicated solutions to simple problems. Good luck and keep me posted. I'd love to hear about your progress.

[therustytracks]

I definitely will. This past weekend I took some time to go through a few intro tutorials on nettuts. I'm blown away by the awesomeness of rails and how easy it makes TDD.