[kaiuhl]

While new developers are coming up learning Ruby as their first language and in the context of Rails, keep in mind that Rails introduces you to much of the core Ruby language, idioms and at least a few design patterns and useful abstractions. It also adds Sass and Coffeescript. There's much more complexity and therefore knowledge required for a "whiz kid" to build a useful Rails app that it's hardly a fair comparison. This "subpar software" meets a need that seasoned developers can't or won't.

Also of note: it's no longer 1999. People expect a bit more out of their website than during the glory days of the independent 19-year-old PHP developer. These novices are orders of magnitude more capable than PHP developers of a decade ago. These folks building one-off websites for clients are also often doing both design and development—something many developers are awful at.

This elitism should stop. Programming is a means to an end, and we should welcome any and everyone despite their level of commitment, talent, or focus.