I work primarily in .NET and I completely agree with these sentiments. I couldn't have said it better but I'll add my $0.02 anyways. .NET isn't necessarily sl

I work primarily in .NET and I completely agree with these sentiments. I couldn't have said it better but I'll add my $0.02 anyways. .NET isn't necessarily slow* to work with (GSD, not benchmark wise), but it can be very restrictive and limiting to work with. This is probably great for "enterprise" (whatever that means anymore) where cutting edge technology is considered inherently risky, but in modern startup environments it's just not going to cut it. Community involvement and maturity is part of it too, a talent pool that has a lot more myopic developers who have limited themselves to one language, one framework and one stack is another. Windows as an environment is a third reason, it just doesn't have the same flexibility, tooling and automation of * nix environment. Fun, as a purely subjective reason, is a fourth, I just see * nix devs having more fun with the tools they are using and the stuff they are building. *though in my own experience the incredibly strict static typing of C#/Java feels slow to me. If I'm trying to design my software well so that it is extensible, understandable and maintainable I find I have far less trouble with this in Ruby, even considering that I have far more skill and experience in C#. That's just my personal experience so YMMV obviously.