[smoe]

I think this is because, in the 2000s, when a lot of these companies were founded, Ruby and Python hit an pretty much empty sweetspot for web application development in between quickly thrown together scripts and the super heavy enterprisey frameworks.

But since then, that space has gotten a lot more crowded from all sides. There is now a pretty big selection of mature technology to pick from depending on your needs.

In the case of Python, it got also a massive boost from its popularity in datascience. Couple of years ago I thought Python web development is dying out slowly, but seems to have swung back quite a bit.

[lgregg]

I think most frameworks/languages swing in and out of the lime light. Using Ruby as an example, it was great then got really hot, then as you said Python got the data science boost and moved a lot of people there. I'm curious if Matz makes good on his promise to 3x Ruby that will result in Ruby getting some more data science libraries.

That said, last I checked regarding performance Rails and Django were pretty much neck and neck with a negligible difference with rails being very slightly faster (iirc).

I think also a big reason why Ruby is feature so heavily in this list is because of it's focus of developer productivity. It's a nice mesh of flexibility and convention. Generally all projects are setup and organized the same but you can still write a conditional if statement a dozen ways. Compared to my personal experience working with Django and Python are the woes of getting everything configured and setup for each project which is frankly a pita. Also, Python is fairly regimented on a lot of flexibility which has its perks too.