gistfile1.txt

#Full Stack Rails vs Full Stack JavaScript
Aspiring developers often ask “should I learn Rails or JavaScript to become a web developer?” Most students are concerned with picking a language that is easy to learn and that will offer them strong job prospects. Thankfully both Rails and JavaScript are great learning languages and open the door to many job opportunities.

##Learning
There are many aspects to consider when deciding whether a language is good for learning. Foremost among these is whether the language is beginner friendly, how extensive and support the community and resources are, and whether or not best practices are emphasized. 

###Beginner Friendly
Rails uses the Ruby programming language, which focuses on simplicity and productivity. The creator of Ruby, [Yukihiro Matsumoto](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukihiro_Matsumoto), designed it to have an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write. As such, printing out a “Hello world” is as easy as:
```ruby
puts “Hello world”
```
JavaScript is also beginner friendly, with no local install required, you can start writing JavaScript in your browser’s JavaScript console this second. JavaScript’s syntax follows tried a true language conventions pioneered in C and Java, so there will be few surprises.

###Community and Resources
The JavaScript and Rails communities are both thriving, online and off. Online there are many well-written resources for both languages, and both are regularly ranked within the top ten most commonly referenced languages on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/). There has been an explosion in conferences, meetups, and drinkups for both languages in cities all over the country. In addition, both communities have garnered a reputation for being friendly to beginners and autodidact learners, encouraging and supporting new programmers to dive in and start hacking.

###Best Practices
Both Rails and JavaScript encourage the use of best practices amongst their developers. Rails is a strongly opinionated frameworking, and forces developers to use it in a commonly accepted way. It enforces RESTful conventions, the MVC architectural pattern, and testing. While the early days of JavaScript were characterized by a wild west attitude to best practices, the language and derivative frameworks has matured greatly. Now most JavaScript development is done within well defined frameworks emphasizing best practices.

##Job Outlook
The job outlooks for Rails and JavaScript are similarly rosey. Both have a history of strong job growth, and are projected to continue growing in the future. In addition, salaries for Rails and JavaScript developers are high, and increasing every year.

###Growth
According to an analysis by Indeed of the relative growth of web development frameworks, demand for Ruby on Rails developers is nearly 5 times the demand for Python, and nearly 10 times the demand for PHP.

![relative-growth](http://www.indeed.com/trendgraph/jobgraph.png?q=Rails%2C+JavaScript%2C+PHP%2C+python&relative=1)

The relative growth JavaScript isn’t increasing as much as Rails, but that is only because JavaScript is increasing from a much larger base.

![absolute-growth](http://www.indeed.com/trendgraph/jobgraph.png?q=Rails%2C+JavaScript%2C+PHP%2C+python)

Both languages are growing strongly and offer many job opportunities to aspiring developers.

###Salaries
Given the increasing demand for Rails and JavaScript developers, it is not surprising that salaries are high and have been increasing.

According to [PayScale](http://www.payscale.com/) Ruby on Rails developer jobs pay an average of $69,606 nationally, and as high as $105,000 in some markets.

![rails-salaries](https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Screenshots/Screenshot%202015-02-18%2017.00.23.png?_subject_uid=46007005&w=AAD0xEg0lrtcAVG2BsUlH7Qo1lM1uxnsuhubr3DjZsCHwA)

The national average for JavaScript developers in 2014 was $67,532, with some salaries reaching $92,143.

![javascript-salaries](https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Screenshots/Screenshot%202015-02-18%2016.54.16.png?_subject_uid=46007005&w=AADyfkskbWWwUopyZENg7e42DQi4DAQmXTktItYk9bmLyQ)

##Conclusion
The future for JavaScript and Rails developers is bright. Both are offer a supportive structure and culture for beginners. In addition, the number of job openings and salary has been on the rise for both. The answer to the question “should I pick Rails or JavaScript to become a web developer?” is that you can’t go wrong with either.

In the words of our very own Front End Course Director, Joe Lipper:
>Learn to fragdaggle program because guess what, there's a lot of fragdaggle jobs in any language you learn!