[riffraff]

> Ruby itself was effectively moribund until Rails

I think you might mean "unknown" rather than "moribund", but just in case: no it wasn't, it was quite successful, RAA wasn't CPAN but was quite rich, there were steady improvements to the language and the community outside japan was growing (i.e. most of the european ruby user groups started before ruby on rails). It was just growing slowly, rather than skyrocketing.

[wwweston]

Which is to say: in pretty much the same position Perl is in now.

[riffraff]

well, the trend was upwards rather than downwards, I think that makes all the difference.