Wow, it's almost like Rails is implemented with a turing-complete programming langauge that allows you to "write code" to "solve problems"! So innovative!
Having a bit of it is effective. I came to Rails from the Tcl world, and while there is some good technology in Tcl, including i18n, good thread integration, a wonderful C API, and a nice event loop, the language itself has been marketed horribly.
Aggressive marketing is not necessarily a good thing. A lot of people are using Ruby because "it's cool", not because they understand why it's better. As a result, they don't really help the community, all they do is fanboi (as though "recruiting new members" gets you somewhere).
You want a competent community so they write libraries for you. Ruby's community seems to actively discourage people that aren't using it for religious reasons, since the techniques they use for marketing tend to attract the religious type.
Ruby's a good language, don't get me wrong, but the community needs some help.
