On the Web Builder Zone there's a new article from Giorgio Sironi that compares the current states of PHP and Ruby on Rails when it comes to adoption and overall options they each provide.

It has been said ad nauseam that comparing PHP and Ruby on Rails is unfair as one is a programming language and the other is a full-stack framework. In spite of this, we can compare PHP frameworks (which have learned a lot from their first releases) and Ruby on Rails, again not by piling up a list of features, which would be also cluttered by different extensions and plugins. I'm talking about the different approaches taken by PHP and Ruby framework developers.

He talks about the options (or lack there of) that each side of the same web development coin provide and how "magic" and configuration come in to play when developers are making their selections for the most relevant technologies.