[grumblenum]

Given a 15 year retrospective, would you say that Rails lived up to the hype? If you think so, then there is nothing “disparaging” in that comment at all. If you don’t think so, then doesn’t that mean a reader should not regard such promotion with confidence? No need to be defensive.

[Dylan16807]

It can be disparaging to say that someone is doing a thing because they got paid to, when they were not in fact paid to. Even when that thing, by itself, is not bad.

In this case it implies dishonest astroturfing or similar, especially when you talk about whether their statements were "grounded in truth". (Which is different from whether Ruby did well years later.)