I think there is some merit in this, upgrading from Rails 2 to Rails 3 was an absolute nightmare, and after beginning, I had to stop, create a new app from scra

I think there is some merit in this, upgrading from Rails 2 to Rails 3 was an absolute nightmare, and after beginning, I had to stop, create a new app from scratch and manually copy files over and edit configuration files to get where I was going ... and that was for a very small Rails app, so I absolutely share your thoughts there. Upgrading from Rails 3 to 4, though, feels much easier as there haven't been so many fundamental changes in the way Rails does things. And things that have changed have usually been moved to gems that you can include to keep your app working as it was before. Fundamentally though ... Rails has an attitude that makes it pretty difficult to adopt at big organizations precisely for the reasons that you've mentioned. I'm yet to encounter a Rails version upgrade that wasn't a massive task , and I can imagine having to deal with that as a startup whose life's blood depended on it. (airbnb's experience on this is here http://nerds.airbnb.com/upgrading-airbnb-from-rails-23-to-rails-30/ http://nerds.airbnb.com/upgrading-airbnb-from-rails-23-to-ra..., and lots of companies don't have the resources or talent that they do). And supporting older versions in the Rails community does get short shrift though it is getting A LOT better these days. However, I have to take issue with your assertion that "I am also strongly convinced that Rails is never the right solution" Which I feel comes from a place of frustration. I think the rewards of using Rails ... developer happiness, productivity and ease of getting from idea to software, make it worth it to put up with some of the warts that it has. Things will only get better (and already are).