What is the developer quality of the Rails world?
(See Dan Grigsby’s recent article on the Rails contract market for prerequisite reading.) Rails largely draws its market share from PHP and Java. Rails apps can be written as quickly as PHP, and can be as robust and maintainable as Java. And developer satisfaction exceeds both. In my experience, the Rails community is extremely strong at the top, like the best of the Python, Java, and Lisp communities. People like Dave Thomas set the tone of the Ruby and Rails community, and you couldn’t ask for a better tone-setter. Most professional Ruby developers that I know are smart, personable, and pragmatic – the kinds of folks that you want on your development team. At the same time, there are a more and more mediocre Rails developers watering down the community. This wasn’t true two years ago, but as Rails grows, it attracts more and more newbies. There is nothing wrong with this; Rails is pretty welcoming to newbies, and today’s newbies are tomorrow’s experts. If there is a problem with the
