trying to get a grasp on what to learn next

[drunkenmonkey]

Help, I'm currently learning VB.Net and C#; I have been told by a few of the guys that I work with that I should really be focusing on Ruby and PHP.
I'm confused as to why this should be my focus any ideas or foresight would be appreciated.

[Hack]

That depends on what you are doing. Does your job require Ruby and PHP?

If so, then you would need to learn them. Do you want a job where these skills are required, or are you happy with the .NET platform?

What reasons did these guys give for their opinion?

[penagate]

Ruby's very much the "language of the minute". I'm not sure how many workplaces use it, but it's popular to learn.

If your colleagues are telling you to learn those languages, it suggests you will be working with web-based projects.

[Hack]

Web based projects does not preclude the use of VB.NET or C#

[drunkenmonkey]

That depends on what you are doing. Does your job require Ruby and PHP?

If so, then you would need to learn them. Do you want a job where these skills are required, or are you happy with the .NET platform?

What reasons did these guys give for their opinion?

Well everything we work on is in either C# or VB.Net. We use VS2003 and VS2005.
In fact most of the work here is strictly Microsoft based development. It's my understanding that PHP and Ruby are more on the Linux side.
I always thought PHP was just a scripting language on steroids, I'm not sure exactly what Ruby is.
I don't know if they are planning to shift this way or are just telling me I need to be more well rounded.

[penagate]

PHP and Ruby are both interpreted server-side scripting languages. Ruby is newer, and more like Python. PHP is more like C/Java mashed up with Perl. Both can be run on both Windows and Linux although they are more common on Linux servers.