[SpiralLab]

Agreed! (IMO the ML backlash is more of a XML backlash that carried over to other MLs).

Regardless - A designer that can design for any* framework with standard CSS/HTML is more flexible than a designer that knows HAML, but could't write vanilla markup.

That why I was surprised about the Coffeescript (preferring HAML is a popular opinion, as-is Rspec: yet Erb and Test::Unit are still the defaults).

Edit: I agree that alt. languages/syntaxes in frameworks are nice. Forcing them on people is not nice.

[carbon8]

"A designer that can design for any framework with standard CSS/HTML is more flexible than a designer that knows HAML, but could't write vanilla markup."

This is a very bizarre statment. How can someone write haml without understanding HTML and CSS? How could that even be possible? Haml is little more than classes, ids and element names.

In my experience as a Ruby contractor I've seem many, many more WTFs in erb than haml, to the point where when I join a project using erb I now brace myself.