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The author is either not making it clear that they understand the difference between a language and a framework, or that they are not aware of the difference. I find it puzzling that they do not wish to learn a new language. Does not every programmer desire to learn new and (in the author's case) thought provoking languages to expand their mind and skill-set?

New things are bad. I'm still wearing my Miami Vice/Robert Palmer outfits.
And I look good.

Is Ruby on Rails Dying?

No, but some of the fanboys are starting to reach the limit of their skills and don't know what to do. It must be Rails fault. They will be screaming that something else doesn't work like PHP in a few months.

This is a stupid article.

This is a poorly-opinionated piece against Rails. The author, who hasn't used Rails for almost two years, probably just read Zed's rant and, never having learned Ruby or Rails himself, just decided to add to the 'bashing'. The author seriously needs use Rails again, just to formulate a much better and unbiased opinion.

Simply knowing a bit about a programming language (if PHP can even be called such) does not make one a developer, or even a programmer. Also, it never reinforces an argument when a person admittedly is not knowledgeable on a particular subject.

I'll concede that Symfony is nice--so long as you're constrained to using PHP. But still, Symfony is built on top of a shaky foundation (PHP) and when you get right down to it, Symfony is just a cheap imitation. You can't just dress up a $5 whore and call her a debutante.

Another thing is his bullet points just don't add up. He said that Rails lacked documentation--this claim BLOWS MY MIND as any Rails developer can tell you that the documentation is comprehensive and well organized. He said that Ruby was counter-intuitive--I don't even know what to say to that one except that I'm not surprised to hear that from a PHP user. PHP is hardly a programming language at all and its community is largely comprised of mediocre programmers (such as the author, applying the term "programmer" loosely, of course.). The point about it running slow and not being available from his hosting company are simply not the fault of Rails.

Basically, the only argument that holds water is that he admitted to being not smart enough to learn something new.

I agree the article is bad... but what's so "shaky" about php? And it's "hardly a programming language"? Why?
It has private + protected visibility, final + abstract classes, interfaces, method invocation handling, there are frameworks for ORM, AOP, DI,
unit+mock testing, even Integration, and besides Symfony excellent web frameworks like Solar, Prado, or WACT. And much more.
That being said I myself do prefer ruby :)

I agree. PHP gets a bad rap (unjustified, most of the times), but you have to admit that it has that reputation because of the mediocre programmers out there who think they're "PHP Masters" when they're definitely not. I've used PHP professionally for about 4 years now, and PHP is a great web development language that has grown a lot in the past couple of years. Of course, I prefer Ruby now, but that doesn't mean that PHP sucks. It's the programmers who suck.