Similarly, Ruby developers are flocking to easier technologies like Passenger in droves rather than sticking with the older (but often faster) technologies like

Similarly, Ruby developers are flocking to easier technologies like Passenger in droves rather than sticking with the older (but often faster) technologies like NGinX and mongrel_cluster. It's nice to have the powerful technologies for more "serious" deployments, but it's really nice to be able to easily get a quick project up and running. Heroku, as he mentions, is fabulous for that.