[lkrubner]

At this point I think it is worthwhile to contrast Ruby against Rails. Ruby has fallen behind, if you want great meta programming, you can get all the joy, plus much better speed, by using something like Clojure. That also gives you access to the vast ecosystem of Java libraries.

But Rails is a different story. For jumpstarting a greenfield API or CRUD app, there is nothing quite as good as Rails. Django and Symfony and other frameworks have tried to imitate Rails, but Rails is still way out in front, with better tools, and the marriage of Rails tools with Ruby's advanced meta-programming is something difficult to replicate elsewhere.

If your company needs a custom CRM or CMS, Rails remains the best starting place.