I've lost track of the numerous amount of times that I have sat down and started to learn and build a web application with Ruby on Rails. I get excited about it just by reading any mention of the framework in a blog or tutorial and decide - again - that I want to learn it. But then I give up after a few hours because I figure that PHP can do the same thing, and I don't even have to learn a new language. But I still keep coming back to the same question; is developing a web app in Rails faster that developing the same thing in PHP? Jesse Skinner seems to think it is. He just switched from PHP and wrote an article on his blog about his experience.

So I did it. I've been coding in Rails since the start of the month, and it's been a great time. Sure, there was a learning curve. It took me some time to figure out how to do the simplest of things. But I read through the book, I experimented, I searched the web for answers, and now I'm cruising. I'm about 80% as good in Rails as I am in PHP, except with Rails everything takes half the time so in the end it's actually faster.

What struck me most about the above quote, is the part in bold. Is it really faster to work with? Can't I achieve the same thing with PHP and a good framework? I have read a lot of info on Rails and what its advantages are, but I still don't know these answers. So can anyone help me out here? Shall I switch to Rails and why?