Why pay someone else to build your website? You know what you want, so don't waste the time and money it takes to get someone else to understand what you want. Sure they could do it faster, but is that worth giving up all that control? And what happens when something goes wrong? Are you going to call someone every time you need to update it?

Coding is a tremendously powerful skill to develop. If you are already a coder, you know learning a new web development language will make you more valuable as the world becomes more web-enabled. The Internet of Things Initiative is working hard to bring the whole planet online, from appliances to cars to soil, with sensors and networking. Learning Python or Ruby can be your first step into an entirely new life and may become absolutely necessary for your business to survive.

Python and Ruby were released in the early 1990s, around the time the web was born. In fact, Ruby was built using some of the design elements from Python. They weren't made specifically for web development, but these two languages became extremely popular after they were used to create some of the biggest destinations on the web. Rails is the open source full-stack framework that simplifies building web platforms with the underlying Ruby language. Ruby on Rails was used to create huge sites like Twitter and Hulu. Python racked up a lot of publicity by being the number one choice of Google and YouTube. Udemy produced a great infographic summing up this war of the web-building titans of Python vs. Ruby .

Too Much Ruby

If you took a look at that infographic you can see a few things stand out. First of all, Python gets the best possible score for Ease of Learning. Even though there are twice as many Python developers as Ruby developers, there were slightly more Ruby jobs posted on Monster when the data was collected at the end of 2011. It could be that people are learning Python for their own websites and Ruby developers are becoming harder to find.

Although Python has been around longer, there are many more Ruby on Rails bootcamps, tutorials, etc. online and ITRW (in the real world aka meatspace as opposed to cyberspace). It's also clear that there is just not enough focus on Python. This may be because Python seems so much easier to teach yourself but not everyone learns that way.

Why Python Is Better

There's no question that both Ruby on Rails and Python, using a web application framework like web2py or Django, are equally great at building websites. What makes Python better is that its ease of use allows beginners to start building powerful sites more quickly. Python certainly has the power to grow with you in complexity as you become a better programmer, but ease of comprehension will continue to serve you in several ways. For example, one of the hardest parts of coding is going back to what you coded long ago and trying to remember the logic of it. Because Python uses natural language with white spaces and indenting, it is much more clear and easier to read than languages like Ruby. That alone makes it easier to fix mistakes or do updates. Also, there are literally thousands of pre-built modules that can be snapped on to let you get up and running on the web immediately. Its intuitive introduction to object-oriented coding concepts, such as communities, modules, and libraries, allows you to move on to other related programming languages as they develop. Best of all, Python broke into the top five most popular programming languages this month , up 10 percent over the last year. Ruby is sitting comfortably in 9th place, with just 3 percent growth after a decline last year. That means there will be a lot more Python-based web applications on the way.

Kickstarting Python FR for Web Development

Enough talk, let's do something about it. Specifically, I'm doing my part to help people get started with Python by building my own online e-course. Stop by my Python course Kickstarter page for all the details. I am developing an ebook, complete with exercises and code samples, as well as a video series for people new to Python Web Development. The main goal is for beginners to gain the basic knowledge on how to setup a development environment quickly so you can start building web applications. You will learn through a series of exercises, which are challenging enough that you will have to write code on your own. You will screw up. But you will learn from your mistakes. And you will get better.

The ideal reader has some background in a programming language, but beginners are welcome. If you are completely new to Python, you should consider the $25 pledge to get the introductory Python FR course as well as the new web development course; this will give you all the resources you need to go from complete beginner to web development guru!