[aeonflux]

Raw number of developers doesn't matter at all. The ratio of offers to developers out there determines how easy the hiring actually is. I've tried to hire some quality PHP developers and it's as hard as Ruby/Python if not harder. First thing is, that you always get all the Wordpress people, who fixed one plugin and claim to have 10 years of PHP experience. Then you have to filter out all the 10 YoE who actually have 1 YoE done 10 times. For some reason all this is less of a problem in less popular stacks.

[jacquesm]

It does if the number is '0' vs 'some'. It usually depends on how and where you do your hiring. For those that only want to hire local developers it is very well possible that there are no local Rubyists, it is also possible that it is the other way around.

Typically there are a lot more proficient PHP programmers than Ruby programmers around here, but if a company were open to remote workers the situation would right away change considerably.

There is also the price factor to take into account.

All in all, more often than not developer availability works itself into these choices.