Rails was most influential in Rails v1 and v2, and after that it pretty much stagnated. In spite of that, millions of dollars have been spent upgrading Rails ap

Rails was most influential in Rails v1 and v2, and after that it pretty much stagnated. In spite of that, millions of dollars have been spent upgrading Rails apps through subsequent versions, millions spent on developer training, etc. Sinatra picked up the REST torch from Rails (and from Camping) and sparked a significant change in how web apps are built and a cultural shift from monolithic frameworks to micro-frameworks. Node and Flask picked up from there, and gathered steam because both the Python and Node dependency management systems are less broken than Rubygems, allowing more practical use of smaller, orthogonal modules. Now Elm and React are focused on improving the reliability and reducing the incidental complexity of web applications. Aside from the occasional PR stunt rant from 37 Signals, Rails does not really have a thought leadership role in the development community anymore, aside from a loyal following of career rails programmers, who likely adopted Rails after v3 and would have been just as happy with nearly any monolithic framework and authoritative pundit. None of this is good or bad. Who knows what the future has in store. Rails pre v3 inspired a lot of the thinking that came after, but has not really embraced any of the ideas that emerged subsequently. I think the best analogy is Windows. It's a cash cow, it's not going to change quickly, and many people consider it the only sensible tool for the job.