[Artemidoros]

Ruby is something people learn because they think programming is cool.

In my experience this is a myth or a at least a stereotype more prevalent in the marketing of Rails than reality.

I had the strong impression during my stint in the Rails world that Ruby was mostly learned as a signaling device. Young developer slaving away at some random Java or PHP job dreaming of making it big in a startup, with the mistaken believe that simply hanging around the in-crowd will magically catapult him in the top 5% of their profession.

Sure there are good people in this community, but they became good by working hard for a very long time and not by writing a trivial Twitter client using the currently hot testing framework/NoSQL database on their MacBook Pro in a Starbucks after skimming through the pick axe book.

wanting to be a cool Rubyist like _why causes a lot less damage than wanting to have a high-paying job

Why should chasing fame be inherently better than chasing money?

Just speaking from my own experience, I learned way more from cynic mercenaries than from wannabe rockstars and I can't see why emulating e.g. Obie Fernandez will cause less damage than aiming for a position as a technical fellow.