Again, from the brother's perspective, perhaps learning Ruby is the tempting shortcut ("I'll just learn this awesome language first and my website will be super easy to upgrade and modify")
...
and then it takes him too long to get back to his website, which has floundered and is no longer popular or making money. Or ruby was too hard for him so he went back to tweaking his site with PHP. Or <whatever>
My point is that it is all about perspective, something that a lot of HN misses. Not everyone cares about technology. Most people just care about getting the job done and making money, using whatever tool is easiest for them to personally use, at the time they need to use it. So to that guy, it isn't a tempting shortcut: it's the best route to prosperity.
Simple versus easy [1]. Getting started with minimal friction is a great virtue for the beginning of a project's life, particularly when it allows amateurs to produce something of value. Software development professionals with stronger requirements (reliability, maintainability, ease of code reading) are not always going to reach for the easiest tool. There's a reason most of the software on your machine isn't written in Visual Basic.
The people who prefer PHP are right. The people who avoid PHP are also right. They are solving fundamentally different problems.
