I agree that different languages don't all have perfectly different purposes or philosophies, but I'm not sure why you'd think I'm claiming that.
I think you could pick better examples. PHP and Ruby are both interpreted, Perl-inspired languages started by hobbyist first-time language designers who released 1.0 versions about months apart. So yes, if you apply them to similar problems and use similar techniques in the same languages, you'll have similar experiences.
But even so, I think PHP's purpose, which is rooted in letting amateurs simply render web pages, is very different than Ruby's purpose, which is a flexible, general purpose, objects-first scripting language. I also think their design philosophies are pretty different. PHP has never worried much about elegance or consistency; Ruby inherited Perl's DWIM approach, but tried to do it in a way that was not just functional, but beautiful.
You have me a bit confused. You say that I could have picked better examples, but then pretty much agree with me wholesale. So it seems I picked exactly the right example, at least if my intention was to support my own point.
That point being that languages such as Perl, Php, Ruby and even Python is relatively minor. I'll claim that any programmer who is competent with one of these will easily be able to transition to one of the others. There may be reasons why people don't always do this, but I don't think they are intellectual.
Yes, I agree that your intention is apparently to support your own point. In trying to win the argument game, you're missing out on the deeper point, and an opportunity for professional development.
I've learned quite a bit from working in different languages. You may not have, but that doesn't indicate there's nothing to learn.
I think you could pick better examples. PHP and Ruby are both interpreted, Perl-inspired languages started by hobbyist first-time language designers who released 1.0 versions about months apart. So yes, if you apply them to similar problems and use similar techniques in the same languages, you'll have similar experiences.
But even so, I think PHP's purpose, which is rooted in letting amateurs simply render web pages, is very different than Ruby's purpose, which is a flexible, general purpose, objects-first scripting language. I also think their design philosophies are pretty different. PHP has never worried much about elegance or consistency; Ruby inherited Perl's DWIM approach, but tried to do it in a way that was not just functional, but beautiful.