I agree, Ruby is slowly going the downward spiral, why: - RoR introduced groundbreaking concepts 7 years ago: strict MVC, a great ORM, migrations, generators a

I agree, Ruby is slowly going the downward spiral, why: - RoR introduced groundbreaking concepts 7 years ago: strict MVC, a great ORM, migrations, generators and conventions over configuration and all features weren't optional, users were forced to user them. At that time it was good, because web programming was not structured and between a too formal Java and a loose PHP weren't many choices. Rails' success was also Ruby's success. - Nowadays all the concepts RoR brought all learned and adapted by other languages' frameworks, often even better and more modularized. So, RoR is not the only choice anymore. - The landscape has changed, RoR and Ruby are facing strong competition: Node.js/Express, Python/Django, Clojure, Scala, and PHP matured with many frameworks - The configuration hassle with Ruby and Rails you described is daily routine which is time consuming even for advanced Rubiest and the entry barrier for beginners. And it won't get better because the core team changes Ruby and Rails with a pace never seen before and breaking code steadily. This development is agressive and pushing RoR in one direction leaving no other options (SCSS? CoffeeScript?). - Ruby itself as a language is controversial—there are definitely nice properties but it still comes with drawbacks: it's slow, it still changes too often, the syntax is too dense (writing is quick but comprehension and readability is hard), no concurrency or cluster model, ecosystem exists only for Rails; but still it could established itself with Rails and in few other areas. => Demand for Ruby and RoR will stay high due to many legacy systems and many Rubiest who still earn high day rates and won't leave due to high opportunity costs if they learned new languages. But newcomers will choose less and less Ruby.