I agree with this completely. I just wanted to add though that had I stayed with Oracle and PHP / Java, I would not know the things I know now, nor would I have had the opportunities that I found because of those. Ruby (the community) has challenged me time and time again not to dismiss something just because it's new or different. I say that because I still talk to coworkers and former coworkers who are still doing what I did. They don't know about NoSQL, they don't know about load balancing, or metaprogramming, or evented Javascript, or any of the things I've had to become aware of to do my job. (Or HAML and SASS which are just fun and awesome).
I see far too many people getting comfortable and then becoming dangerously close to being out of date.
I don't like the distractions of "new shiny" every week, but the stagnation of a community scares me even more. So I strike a balance.
What I would like to see is more involvement from people who claim to know what they're doing to join our Rails Mentors project (http://railsmentors.org/) Then they can teach people, instead of waving hands about NoSQL and leaving it up to "an exercise for the reader."
(Disclosure: I am the coordinator of the Rails Mentors project. It's non profit and part of RailsBridge (railsbridge.org)
I see far too many people getting comfortable and then becoming dangerously close to being out of date.
I don't like the distractions of "new shiny" every week, but the stagnation of a community scares me even more. So I strike a balance.
What I would like to see is more involvement from people who claim to know what they're doing to join our Rails Mentors project (http://railsmentors.org/) Then they can teach people, instead of waving hands about NoSQL and leaving it up to "an exercise for the reader."
(Disclosure: I am the coordinator of the Rails Mentors project. It's non profit and part of RailsBridge (railsbridge.org)