Link Details

Really inaccurate salary numbers, but could be true in some parts of the world.

Replace 'Ruby' with 'Java', and 'Java' with 'C++' and this article is from the mid-90s.

too true. Then again, in the mid-90s everyone thought Perl would take over the world...
(I was one of them, I thank my lucky stars everyday that I was wrong)

There are very few who even admit to ever having programmed in it anymore.

This implies that Ruby hasn't had time to develop a market. However, Ruby was released in 1995 at the same time as Java. All the "cool" features of Ruby weren't enough to make it a relatively popular language until RoR was released in 2005.

To be fair, Ruby is new to the west. It was, and still is, very popular in Japan, but up until about 2000 there wasn't any english documentation for it.

After a few books were released (Programming Ruby in 2000) it began to spread throughout the english speaking world.

That's not completely true. I used Ruby in 1996. There was documentation, just no books. If it weren't for RoR, there would still probably be few if any books on the language. As willcode4beer said, Ruby was positioned as an alternative to Perl (hence the name).

After thinking about this some more (the perils of comment posting at 4 am with jet lag), it may have been 1998 rather than 1996. Apparently that's when the first English web site was created.

It appears my memory may not be so bad after all. Based on information I've seen on the ruby-list mailing list, there was an English reference manual as early as 1996. The preface is shown in http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-list/272.

True but, back then Ruby was mostly seen as a very useful shell scripting language. Many said, combine Perl and Awk and make it beautiful.

It wasn't a bad read overall. For the record I *am* a fulltime rails developer. I feel well compensated and I'm doing something I love. Some people love Java. Hell, some people love VB.To each his own. =)

FWIW, I think less developers in the Rails community makes for higher wages. Supply / Demand / etc. But then again I'm no economist. =P

Who's demanding is also important. If a lot of the RoR demand is coming from underfunded Bubble 2.0 startups, the pay is bound to be lower than what established enterprises are paying. And RoR is such a cultish quasi-religion among its fiercest advocates (the ones who will swoop in to vote down this comment, for example) that both the employers and employees in some places (not all) probably feel that developing in RoR is some pure, holy calling that they should consider a privilege to engage in, and hence should do it for less pay.

Some people want a new car every 2 years, some want satisfaction from their job.

People on the East demand both - a new car every 2 years AND satisfaction from their job - these days. They get it.
People on the West want *only* satisfaction from their job - and remain satisfied with old broken cars.

Wow!! Why does a programmer need to be broken (in mind, financially)?? Why this kind of a thought process?? I don't understand it. Personally speaking, I want both, and I get it.

I don't have *any* problems when the author of the blog post says "The difference in median pay (in my area) is a new car every two years.". That's good forward fabulous thinking to me. Let us get both (a new car every 2 years AND satisfaction from our jobs) to stay ahead in the game in this competitive world.