[SiliconAlley]

This assertion is, categorically and empirically, ridiculous. Yes, the runtime and framework are slow compared to something like go and Revel, but that is not the principal benefit of Rails. Rails' principal benefit is taking care of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, or whatever its analogue is for developers. The most recent Rails app I wrote has average render times of 7ms (excluding network latency) on dedicated hardware largely because most views can be rendered with just 3 memcached hits. What's more, implementing the nested caching strategy necessary to achieve this was pretty simple with the out-of-the-box capabilities of Rails 4. If I'm busy worrying about lower-level concerns it doesn't matter if my runtime and framework are blazing fast - I don't have the confidence or time to implement strategies like this, or at least not with nearly as little effort. The proof is in the pudding. Anecdotes to the contrary are welcome.