Funny. My friend was much like that guy (also with some framework past, he did some extensions to the eZ for instance) but switched to Ruby recently and says: no intention to go back.
First he just started to generate pages using erb, much like you would craft quick'n'dirty php pages getting stuff from the db, but with erb. He said the clean syntax and sane libraries were refreshing.
Then he discovered Merb and started to tinker with it. He didn't want to check Rails as it seemed "too high level, too automagic", good for him.
Then, when I mentioned Rack, he tried it and fell in love with Sinatra (no pun intended). Now he says he's several times more productive than with PHP, doesn't go insane, doesn't have to learn big monstrous framework (that was the reason he sticked to PHP in the first place), can invent and use his low-level hacks on a http conversation.
So: what he did quick'n'dirty in PHP he now does quicker'n'cleaner in Ruby, still being low-level as he likes it.
The catch is that no one has never evangelized Ruby to him. He just tried it out of his own curiosity.
First he just started to generate pages using erb, much like you would craft quick'n'dirty php pages getting stuff from the db, but with erb. He said the clean syntax and sane libraries were refreshing.
Then he discovered Merb and started to tinker with it. He didn't want to check Rails as it seemed "too high level, too automagic", good for him.
Then, when I mentioned Rack, he tried it and fell in love with Sinatra (no pun intended). Now he says he's several times more productive than with PHP, doesn't go insane, doesn't have to learn big monstrous framework (that was the reason he sticked to PHP in the first place), can invent and use his low-level hacks on a http conversation.
So: what he did quick'n'dirty in PHP he now does quicker'n'cleaner in Ruby, still being low-level as he likes it.
The catch is that no one has never evangelized Ruby to him. He just tried it out of his own curiosity.